Matt Slick Live (Guest Host Luke Wayne)

The following program is recorded content created by the Truth Network. It's Matt Slick live. Matt is the founder and president of the Christian Apologetics Research Ministry found online at karm.org. When you have questions about Bible doctrines, turn to Matt Slick live.

Francis, taking your calls and responding to your questions at 877-207-2276. Here's Matt Slick. Good afternoon and welcome to the show.

This is Luke Wayne, a colleague of Matt Slick's, filling in for him today as he had to be out with family on some things today. So it is a pleasure to be back on the air with you today. Give us a call at 877-207-2276. For those of you unfamiliar with the ministry, maybe tune in to the show for the first time. This is a radio broadcast of the Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry. You can find us online at karm.org, that's C-A-R-M dot O-R-G, and we are a Christian apologetics ministry. So we're focused on that branch of Christian theology that's concerned with the defense of the Christian faith, answering objections and providing a positive case for why Christianity is true, or as the New Testament says, to give an answer for the hope that is within us. And so we exist as a ministry to equip the local churches and individual believers to be able to stand more solidly on your faith, to be able to communicate the gospel with greater confidence. And so if that's something that you are looking for to grow in those ways, I encourage you to go check out karm.org again, C-A-R-M dot O-R-G, and you'll find a large library of articles on a wide variety of topics, answering alleged Bible contradictions or difficult-to-understand biblical passages and principles of biblical interpretation, matters of church history, responding to cults and false religions, to Mormonism, Jehovah's Witnesses, Islam, to the claims of atheism and modern secularism. It's a wide variety of material that's there to be a help and a resource to pastors, Sunday school teachers, everyday Christians who are trying to understand and live out your faith and share that faith with your friends and neighbors and the people in your community. And if you're really looking to dive in and grow more in that area, KARM has three online educational programs or online self-paced schools that you can sign up for at karm.org slash schools, and we have a school of Christian theology, a school of critical thinking or logic, and a school of apologetics. And so you can go on and look at those, pick out the one that works for you, or sign up for all of them, and they're there to help you at your own pace work through and grow in your ability to know and defend the Christian faith. Those have grown out of Matt Flick, our founder, his decades of Christian ministry experience and evangelism experience, as well as in-depth research. So it would be a joy to be able to talk with you guys about those things.

Again, phone lines are open, give us a call at 877-207-2276. And for those of you who might be going and checking the website out, you'll notice that yes, we cover a lot of the major issues, but also if you look down in the menu, we've got a whole section that's called Minor Groups and Issues, and this is where we have dealt with a number of cults, religious movements, and New Age philosophies, and things that don't necessarily affect that many people. And yet, we want to see the gospel shared and truth proclaimed, even among those who are part of small, minority religious groups. And one of those that I had the privilege to write most of the articles on is a group called the World Mission Society Church of God. Now, here in Utah, where I do ministry at, they have, in the last ten years, become more involved. My first knowledge of this group was when a couple people, members of their congregations out here, came and knocked on the door and attempted to share their religious message with my wife, who then took contact information and we tried to reach out with them. And other local pastors around here started contacting me, saying, hey, have you heard of these guys?

What's going on with this? We're starting to see them show up, people in our congregation, on college campuses or outside of Walmarts. Even one guy I knew in prison ministry was encountering their teachings a great deal. And so, there was a need for the church, and there are lost people trapped in this group, and so I wanted to know more about it.

I wanted to help Christians, pastors, individuals be able to respond and share their faith. And so, if you go on com.org, search, you can read a number of articles, but I'd like to give you a summary in case you, yourself, or someone you know comes across this group, you can be prepared to respond to their teaching. They're, again, a minority religious group right now, but currently a growing one. So again, this group is called the World Mission Society Church of God. They were originally founded in South Korea, and have since grown into an international movement, with growing presence in the United States due to concerted proselytizing efforts.

They were formally established in 1964 by a man who I apologize to anyone familiar who I may be butchering the pronunciation, but a founder whose name is Anh Phang Yang, and who claimed to be God incarnate, and to be coming to issue in the final covenantal era. There was the Old Testament, the New Testament, the era of God the Father, which they say is the Old Testament. They say the era of the New Testament was God the Son, and now the incarnation of God as the Holy Spirit in their founder coming as a man to reinstate mandatory feast days like in the Old Testament, to demand baptism in the name of their founder, to begin spreading teachings like a pre-existence that were all supernatural beings that are just temporarily dwelling in these bodies, to reinstate many of the Old Testament laws, and to claim that these things are morally necessary for salvation. So this is a false gospel. We have a false God, we have a false gospel. But what's become their trademark belief, beyond all of these things that most people know them for, is their claim that there is not only a God the Father, but that God has a consort, that there is a God the Mother, and that in fact it was impossible for God the Father to create life without also having a second divine being, a feminine divine being, God the Mother. And so they believe in these two deities, a male deity who at one time was father, at one time was son, and now is spirit, and there's a heresy called modalism.

But then they also believe in a feminine second deity, a God the Mother, who they believe is a belief in her, they also say is necessary for eternal life. So all of these things are not only errant heretical teachings contrary to the New Testament, but they make them a central part of their gospel, that if you do not accept these things and practice these things, that you cannot be saved. And any time I'm teaching somewhere at a church, or spending time talking with young believers and college students and things like that, teaching on apologetics and taking people out to do evangelism, and I have been in passing to mention this group, it astounds me how many people, especially college age, are coming across this group and wondering, what do we do about it? Well, there's several important ways that we can respond.

First of all, you don't have to be an expert. Preach the gospel. Open your Bible and share what you know. Declare one and only one God in all of existence, that God is a Trinity who is always Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, not at one time one and at one time another playing different roles. That God needs no co-creator.

There is no Mother God. That salvation is not through the keeping of feasts and laws, but is by grace alone, through faith alone, in the true and living Christ alone. But beyond that, to demonstrate the falsehood of their beliefs, there are a few important ways that we can do that. One comes down to their founder himself. So their founder claimed to be God. He claimed that his coming was the second coming of Jesus.

And that presents a serious problem for them, because their founder has since died. And that means if he was Jesus, that Jesus died a second time. There's a problem here, because after the resurrection, even in his humanity, Jesus is said to be immortal, never to die again.

The New Testament is plain. Hebrews 7-16, for example, says, who has become such, who has become High Priest, not on the basis of a physical requirement, but according to the power of an indestructible life, goes on in Hebrews 7-21 to speak of how the Lord has sworn to the Son and will not change his mind, you are a Priest forever. High Priest forever. All the other High Priests stopped being High Priests because they died. The resurrected Christ will never die, so he is High Priest forever. Hebrews 7 goes on to say that the former Priests on the one hand existed in greater numbers because they were prevented by death from continuing. But Jesus on the other hand, because he continues forever, because he doesn't die, holds his priesthood permanently. Therefore he is able to save forever those who draw near to God through them, since he always lives to make intercession for them. It goes on, Hebrews says things later, that Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever, therefore do not be carried away by varied and strange teachings.

That's Hebrews 13-8-9. The unchanging, forever living, resurrected Jesus Christ is central to the Biblical Gospel, and to say, no, he changed, he came back differently, and he died again, that's completely contrary to everything that we read in the New Testament. Elsewhere, Romans 6, Paul says, now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again. Death no longer is master over him. For the death that he died, he died to sin once for all. But the life that he lives, he lives to God. So, when members of the World Mission Society Church of God come to you to proclaim their New Covenant Passover Feast that you must keep to be saved, their baptism in the name of their founder that you must keep to be saved, their Heavenly Mother that you must believe in to be saved, there are many ways to biblically refute these things, but you can point to the fact that that founder who came and made those lofty claims and said, he was Christ returned himself, he died. And the New Testament is clear that Christ will never die again.

And so we can know that this cult is untrue, untrustworthy. Alright, we're coming to a break, give us a call, we'll answer your question, 877-207-2276. We'll be back after this. Welcome back to the show and good afternoon.

This is Luke Wayne filling in for Matt today. Happy to be here with you. Give us a call at 877-207-2276. We'd love to hear from you guys today. We left off just before the break, we were discussing the religious group known as the World Mission Society Church of God, who has been prophetizing on college campuses and neighborhoods and out in front of grocery stores here in Utah for the last several years, which has led a number of pastors to ask me about them. But I also hear from people writing in other parts of the country because I've written articles on them, thanking me for the articles, asking me questions. So this is a group who, their prophetizing efforts, their efforts to spread their false teaching and their false doctrine is growing across this country and around the world, and so it's worth being aware of.

But it also helps us think through bigger issues. So during the last segment, we talked about one of those central issues, and that's they claim that their founder was the physical return of Jesus Christ. Was God in flesh just as Jesus was? A second incarnation was Jesus' return.

But he died. And the New Testament in multiple places, Hebrews 7 and Romans 6 and elsewhere, makes abundantly clear that Jesus was raised never to die again. Someone comes boasting big claims and claiming to be the return of Jesus. Well, Jesus gives us a number of warnings that there will be false prophets, false messiahs, false teachers who will come and do that very thing, and we are not to be led astray by them. And so this group is one example of many examples of this sort of thing. But another thing that we mentioned briefly in the last segment was that they also insist that they have restored the Passover feast and that you must keep that feast with them or you cannot be saved. That eternal life is not by faith in Christ alone or by his finished work on the cross and the empty tomb alone, but that we must participate in obedience to various laws and ordinances. The chief among them, the one they talk about the most, is their alleged New Covenant Passover, the keeping of the Mosaic Feast Day. And so, how do we respond to this?

You rarely talk with a member of this group without it coming up, and they're not alone. There are other false teachers, other groups. Interestingly enough, the group we're talking about, the World Mission Society Church of God, but the followers of the 20th century false prophet, Herbert W. Armstrong, and the various groups that have split off from his original group also in various ways claim the title Church of God. Now, there are also Orthodox Christian groups that have Church of God in the name, so not saying any time you see the word Church of God, you should reject it. But what's interesting about this parallel is that just like the World Mission Society Church of God, the Armstrongist groups also claim that the keeping of the Old Testament Feast Days is necessary in addition to faith in Christ and the finished work of Christ for eternal life and salvation, that one must keep those laws.

How do we respond to this? Well, there are multiple New Testament passages that speak to this directly. In Acts 15, when the issue of whether Gentile Christians needed to be circumcised and come under the law of Moses and obey all of the ceremonial laws, the Church came together and really argued this out. And the Apostle Paul and his partner Barnabas, as well as the Apostle Peter, and even James, the brother of Jesus, all stood before the Church and testified in unity that, no, this is not the case. We are saved by grace. It is by what Christ has done, not by what we do, and Gentiles do not have to come under and obey the law.

No one, Jew or Gentile, is saved by obedience to the law, and Gentiles aren't expected to become Jews so as to be saved and have eternal life. And so this gets reflected in teachings throughout the rest of the New Testament. Colossians 2, 16-17 says, therefore, no one is to act as your judge in regard to food or drink, or in respect to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath day, things which are a mere shadow of what is to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. The Passover was an extremely important reminder of a mighty work God had done in delivering Israel out of Egypt, but also pointing forward to the greater deliverance that would come in the Messiah when He died for His people. Not just His people Israel, but His people of every nation, tribe, and tongue, all who will repent and believe that by the blood of Christ, we are delivered from sin and death just as by the blood of the Lamb, the people of Israel were delivered from death and slavery.

And so Paul says these were shadows of what was to come. These feast days, like the Passover, are a shadow, but the true substance is Christ, and therefore we are not to judge one another on such things. This is not an absolute, you-have-to-keep-the-feast type thing. You don't. That's never what it was meant for, to bind the conscience of all men, that in addition to faith in Christ, we must obey this feast day.

Not at all. Galatians 4, 9-11 likely says, but now the fact that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how is it that you turn back to the weak and worthless elemental things to which you desire to be enslaved all over again? You observe days and months and seasons and years. I fear for you that perhaps I have labored over you in vain.

Well, what's happening here? Well, in their former religion, to be right with the gods, they had to do all these external ceremonial things, and these Gentiles came to believe, repented, believed in Christ, turned from their idols, and then they came under this false teaching that said now they have to still observe feast days and outward ceremonial acts and laws to be right with God, and that they were, in a way, falling right back into the pattern of their paganism, right God this time, wrong way to be right with him. Days, months, seasons, years, that's not what our standing before God is based on. Romans 14, 4-6, who are you to judge the servant of another? To his own master he stands or falls, and he will stand, for the Lord is able to make him stand. One person regards one day above another, another regards every day alike.

Each person must be fully convinced in his own mind. He who observes the day, observes it for the Lord. He who eats does so for the Lord, and for he gives thanks to God, and he who eats not, for the Lord he does not eat, and gives thanks to God. And so there are people who keep special days on the calendar. There are people who don't, and honor every day and gratitude before God. And both will stand in Christ before God, if their faith is in Christ. And this brings us to the most important part. We can look at passages about the feasts, but when we get back, I want to look at the positive passages that say, how do we have eternal life?

And it is in Christ, not in feast days. All right, we'll talk about those things more, right after this. Welcome back to the show. This is Luke Wayne filling in for Matt Slick, who is out with family today, but eager to take your calls just the same. So give us a call here at 877-207-2276.

Again that is 877-207-2276. And we have been talking for the last few segments of this show about the false teachings of a group called the World Mission Society Church of God. And we've shown how these false teachings fall biblically short in a number of ways, and how many of the ways they fall short, the ways we respond to that, also equip us to answer any number of other false teachers, false Christs, false prophets, and false Gospels. And in our last segment, we were specifically looking at their claim that one must keep the Passover and the Old Testament Feasts as a mandatory act to obtain eternal life. That in addition to believing in Christ, in addition to what He did for us, we must also fulfill these laws, obey these ceremonies, accomplish these things. For if we do not, according to the World Mission Society Church of God and their Gospel, we cannot be saved. And we looked at the many places in the New Testament where Paul specifically says that we are not to be judged by the keeping of a feast or a festival, we are not to be judged by our fulfillment of Mosaic laws, we are not to be judged by whether we do or do not hold certain days as specially sacred and celebrate them differently, or whether we hold all days equal. None of those things have anything to do with our standing before God and our having of eternal life. Paul even says that they were shadows that pointed forward to the substance that was Christ.

And so I want to turn now and look. Let's say we're talking to someone from the World Mission Society Church of God. We've shown that you don't have to keep the Passover or obey these ceremonial laws to have eternal life, but what would we tell them that we do have to do for eternal life? How does someone obtain eternal life? And so, one way that we can know that a Gospel is false is that they say you have to do something to be saved, and the Scripture clearly says no, you don't. Another way is that we look at what the Scripture actually says the Gospel is, and we see that it's something wholly different than what they're presenting. And so, let's take a look at that positive presentation of what is the Gospel as we see it in Scripture.

How do we have eternal life? Well, John 3, 14-16 is a great place where Jesus himself answers this question. He says, "...as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that whoever believes will in him have eternal life."

Let's pause there for a second. What's the analogy Jesus is giving here? So he does point back to something in the Torah, in the Pentateuch, the five books of Moses, and he says, just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, for those who aren't familiar with this story from Numbers, the Israelites were being punished for their grumbling and their faithlessness, and God sent venomous snakes into their camp. And from the venom of these snakes, they would die a slow, agonizing death, unless God had Moses make the image of a serpent and put it up on a pole, the image of their suffering, of their judgment, of the wrath on them, of these serpents that were being used to judge them. And if they had the faith to go out and simply look to that suffering symbol, to look to that image of a serpent, God would heal them, take the punishment away, and restore them.

If they simply had enough faith to go look. And so, Jesus says, in the same way, the Son of Man must be lifted up, lifted up on the cross, so that whoever believes in him will have eternal life. Not some of the people who believe in him, who also do a number of other things. Whoever believes in him will have eternal life. Whoever looks to the Son in faith will have eternal life.

That wrath will be removed from them. He goes on to say, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that, again, whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life. He goes on after this to say that the one who does not believe is condemned already. The condemnation is already on him.

He's like the person bit by the snake, who won't look, who won't trust. Jesus didn't bring the condemnation. We brought the condemnation through our sin. But Jesus brings the deliverance from that condemnation, and he does the work.

We look to him and trust his finished work. Jesus, similarly, in John 6, when the crowds come to him, hoping for another miracle that will give them another free meal, and Jesus calls them out on it. He then says to them, do not work for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life. So what you should work for is that which endures to eternal life.

The issue is eternal life here. Which the Son of Man will give you, for on him the Father has set his seal. So the crowd wants to know, what are these works? What are these works for eternal life? What must we do to work these works of God, to have this eternal life that you're talking about? He says in John 6 29, this is the work of God, that you believe in him who he has sent. Jesus says things like this a number of times there in John 6 and throughout the Gospel of John, climaxing at the tomb of Lazarus, where he stands and says, I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even if he dies.

What is the drumbeat of Jesus' word? That all who turn in faith to the finished work of Christ will have that eternal life. Jesus paid it all. All to him I owe. The sin had left a crimson stain.

He washed it white as snow. John ends his Gospel by saying, these things I have written, John 20 31, these things I have written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name. So we're not saved by works of the law. We're not saved by fulfilling rites and rituals. We're not saved by the keeping of feasts, the honoring of days, the eating or not eating of particular foods. We are saved by the sinless Son of God, standing in our place, taking the punishment we deserve and clothing us in his righteousness, dying a death that ought to have been ours, and granting us a life that is his.

This is the good news, and it's good news. None of us can be righteous enough. None of us can keep every jot and tittle of the law. But Jesus did keep the law perfectly and completely, was without sin. Faced every situation that tempts us to sin, hungry, tired, betrayed, poor, wandering, lonely, waking up in the morning and having not had your coffee yet. Jesus experienced in his humanity every bit of the things that we use to excuse why we are inclined to sin, why we did that sin. Yet Jesus did it without sin. Hebrew says that we have a high priest who can sympathize, yet he is without sin, and therefore can be our high priest, can intercede to God, because he doesn't have his own sin to deal with. And so he died for ours. Romans 3.28 says, For we maintain that a man is justified by faith apart from works of the law, not by keeping feasts, but by trusting in what Jesus has kept for us. Galatians 2.16, Nevertheless, knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but through faith in Christ Jesus, even we have believed in Christ Jesus, so that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law. After this break, we're going to jump back to the phones, but just know, this is the good news.

Put your trust in Jesus Christ alone apart from works, feasts, festivals, and laws. He has done enough. Here's Matt Slick live, taking your calls at 877-207-2276. Here's Matt Slick. Welcome back to the show.

This is Luke Wayne filling in for Matt Slick today. I'm a colleague of Matt's at the Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry. You can find us online at CARM.org, that's C-A-R-M dot O-R-G. And if you're heading over there, head over to CARM.org slash schools and check out our three self-paced education programs that our founder, Matt Slick, has made from his decades of ministry experience and intense research to help people learn through the topics of Christian theology, of critical thinking or of logic, and of apologetics. And so, go check those out if any one of those is right for you.

It's completely self-paced, very accessible, but thoroughly researched, and a helpful way to, on your own time, be able to work through and grow in many of these matters. Well, let's get back to the phones. If you want to get on the phone with me, give us a call at 877-207-2276. Let's jump to Cindy. Cindy, you are on the air. Hello? Cindy? Cindy, are you there? Hello? You are on the air.

Okay. Well, we have lost Cindy. Let's go to Anne in Charlotte. Anne, you are on the air. Good afternoon. Thank you for taking Matt's place today.

You're doing a great job. Anne. Hello? Hello, Anne.

My question is, how do you speak with... I'm trying to get in contact with you for this question for probably like three months now. Oh, wow. Well, too bad. I've got to go. See you, bye. No, no. Okay.

Go ahead. So my question is, in John Chapter 12, it talks about Mary who anoints Jesus. Is she anointing him for his burial? It might be the case.

But you see, when it does say six days before Passover, there's a certain ceremony that comes in. Now, we don't know if she understood what was going on. And what I'd like to say at this point is... Sorry about that. We are having some technical difficulties. So those of you who were listening in the last week know that there have been some problems with the phone lines that we've got some engineers working on trying to resolve and everything. So had a little trouble. And I apologize to Cindy and Anne, who waited patiently. We were not able to get the phone lines working for you to bring you on the air and talk with you today.

Please forgive me on that. And we will continue to try to get that issue resolved. So that said, in addition to calls, a lot of people reach out to us with their questions via email, which you yourself can do, writing to us at info.com.org. And I've been getting a number of emails personally lately. One of the things I'm most known for at CARM, not necessarily because it's what I've done the most on, but it's gotten some of the most attention, is that I wrote CARM's section on the King James Only movement. And that is the movement that claims not simply that the King James Bible is a solid Bible translation that we shouldn't neglect. I read it myself, so I'd wholeheartedly agree with that sentiment. It's not the only Bible translation that I use, but it's one of them.

I was raised in it, and I do consult it despite its old style of English. But the King James Only movement claims that the King James Bible is the only good translation, that to use any other translation is wrong, that all other translations are perversions. And this is simply untrue.

Any objective looking at the issue will show that that is simply not correct. Now that said, a lot of people who are King James Only, King James Onlyism is not inherently a cult. There are some cults who are King James Only, but there are also many fine brothers in the lower two cults in that position. And I have a lot of wonderful back-and-forth dialogues on email with my King James Only brothers, and I appreciate their pushback, and it helps me learn and grow, and many of the articles that have been written have been in response to thoughtful issues that they've raised. Well, recently, someone reached out to me, writing with a question about Zechariah 13.6. So my latest CARM article, the latest article I've published on the site, is dealing with this question, and whether this verse is evidence for King James Only.

You have a King James Only position. You can read the article fully just by going to CARM.org and look at all the details, but in summary, this is to give context to some of the emails I'm receiving right now, but in summary, the claim is that in the King James, Zechariah 13.6 says, "...and one shall say unto him, What are these wounds in thine hands? And he shall answer, Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends." Now taking that verse by itself, without the context around it, one could construe it to be a prophecy about the crucifixion wounds in Jesus betrayed by his own people, and receive those wounds in the house of his friends, in the house of the Jews, the people of Israel, and that's a way that you could interpret that if all you had was the sentence by itself. But when you read the full context, this passage, even though Zechariah 12 before it does have a messianic prophecy, and just afterward in Zechariah 13 there's also messianic material, but this particular subunit of the chapter is actually talking about false prophets and their final judgment.

Zechariah 13.2-6, it says, "...it will come about in that day, declares the Lord of hosts, that I will cut off the names of the idols from the land, and they will no longer be remembered, and I will also remove the prophets and the unclean spirit from the land. And if anyone still prophesies that his father and mother who gave him birth will say to him, You shall not live, for you have spoken falsely in the name of the Lord, and his father and mother who gave him birth will pierce him through when he prophesies. Also, it will come about in that day that the prophets will each be ashamed of his vision when he prophesies, and they will not put on a hairy robe in order to deceive, but he will say, I am not a prophet, I am a tiller of the ground, for a man sold me as a slave and my youth. And one will say to him, What are these wounds on your hands? And then he will say, Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friend."

So the person speaking is an ashamed false prophet, and the day of the Lord when the false prophets have been exposed and the idols are no more, and that's what's going on in this passage. Well, why does this have to do with King James' onlyism? Well, most modern translations don't say hands then. They'll say wounds on the back, wounds on the body, wounds on the chest, wounds between the arms. And King James' onlyist, interpreting verse 6 as a messianic prophecy about the nail wounds in Jesus' hands, will falsely claim that by referring to the wounds as being somewhere else on the body, that modern translations are trying to hide or malign or remove a prophecy about Jesus. Now, even if this were a prophecy about Jesus, Jesus did have wounds on his back. He did have wounds on his body. The spear wound in his side, the stripes from the whips down his back, the beatings, the crowd of thorns, he had all kinds of wounds besides just on his hands. So there would be nothing hiding any messianic prophecy were there one in this passage, even in the modern translations. But more importantly, the Hebrew actually means between the hands or between the arms, referring to the rest of your body that's between your limbs.

So that's why the translations go that way. So I published this article, and a number of King James' onlyists have written in because of this article to challenge me. Now, what's interesting is that none of them have challenged my conclusions on Zechariah 13.6. So if you're listening to this and you hold to a King James' only position and want to push back on me on that, please, I'd love for you to write to me at info.com.org.

I'd love to hear your response on this. Instead, the response has been to run off to other passages. And so the passage that just got an email about here, just a few minutes before the show, was somebody saying that modern translations can't be trusted because they have removed Acts 837. Now, that's a serious charge. And if you flip and say an NIV or an ESV, you will see that Acts 837 isn't there.

It goes from 36 to 38. Why? Well, the verse, and Philip said, if thou believeth with all thine heart thou mayest, and he answered and said, I believe that Jesus is the Son of God. It's a beautiful verse, it's a nice sentence, and there's true things there. But all of the most ancient manuscripts simply don't have that sentence. What's more, the vast majority of Greek manuscripts throughout all of history do not have that. The vast majority of translations, whether they be ancient Latin translations or Syriac, Coptic, Ethiopic, do not have that phrase in it.

That phrase is only there. It's probably a commentary note that was further explaining the conversion of the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 7 that was meant to be a marginal note and accidentally got copied into the text. But it's simply not in any but a minority of late manuscripts, and even the manuscripts that it's in are all worded very differently. So the claim that because the King James has this sentence, and most modern translations don't—by the way, a few modern translations do the New King James, the modern English version or NIV, and several others—so this wouldn't be a King James-only issue. But the fact of the matter is that the reason why most modern translations moved this sentence into a footnote is because a footnote is probably where it was supposed to be to begin with. It was an explanatory note that was not written by the original author, was not intended to be a part of this text, and so no, my friend who wrote to me today—I won't blast your name over the air—but no, Acts 837 is not a reason to believe in King James-onlyism. It's actually a reason to reject King James-onlyism. It's a fine example of how the King James translators did the best work that they could with the small number of manuscripts, late manuscripts that were available to them, and their translation is a fine translation of the text that they had, and it is a monument and Christian translation in English literature. We should all be deeply grateful for it, and I still read it.

But it is not the last word in biblical translation, and this is an example of things that were mistakenly included because of the late manuscripts that were being used involved. So anyway, thank you guys for joining us today. Sorry about the phone line issues, but please check back in tomorrow. Hopefully we'll have the phones working then. Matt will be back with you. You guys have a wonderful day, and we will talk to you then.