What About SCRIPTURE? Part 1

You're entering Outer Brightness. Today, we kick off a series of episodes based on the LDS Articles of Faith. As children, Mormons memorize and recite these short statements of belief, and they become sort of like a creed that guides a Latter-day Saint's spiritual and religious thought life. When a Mormon is questioning their faith, they will often think in terms of the Articles of Faith trying to determine what they believe now relative to each of these distinctive Mormon beliefs.

Almost two decades ago, while I was in the beginning stages of my Mormon faith crisis, my belief in the Book of Mormon as an ancient text, and thus as God's Word, was beginning to show signs of cracking, and I was wondering, if I don't believe the Book of Mormon is what it is claimed to be, am I still a Mormon? I posted a question to a message board where I discussed religion with fellow Latter-day Saints. I asked, what is the bare minimum that one must believe in order to be a Mormon?

Many of the responses centered around the Articles of Faith, thus our series. A distinguishing feature of Mormonism is its unique scripture. Joseph Smith produced a number of texts that Mormons generally accept as scripture.

The Book of Mormon, the Book of Moses, the Book of Abraham, and the Doctrine and Covenants. To be clear, a strong concept of scripture and of God's continuing revelation to humanity is a basic Mormon belief. Deconstruction of one's belief in the uniquely Mormon scriptures, at least the ones that are claimed to be translations of ancient texts, is a core process as one leaves the LDS church. Mormon leader Jeffrey R. Holland famously warned, Others decide to build their own moral compass and jettison not only their connection to the Book of Mormon, but to the Bible as well. After deconstructing the Mormon texts, they continue a process of deconstruction of the biblical texts.

Or they don't. Some just assume that the Bible would fall too, if they put it under the same scrutiny they applied to the Book of Mormon. The Mormon Article of Faith on scripture says, We believe the Bible to be the word of God, as far as it is translated correctly. We also believe the Book of Mormon to be the word of God. In this episode, the Sons of Light discuss some questions that all Latter-day Saints, believing or doubting or post-Latter-day Saints, have to grapple with after they have crawled over or under or around the Book of Mormon. What about scripture? Is there such a thing as the written word of God?

If so, where can it be found? I think to start, we should just acknowledge that thinking about the image of somebody trying to crawl over or around or under the Book of Mormon is kind of a funny image. Can we just agree on that? Yeah, I mean, I just picture a giant Book of Mormon, like my kid's fort that he disappears into. Yeah, I kind of imagine somebody like wiggling around on the floor with the Book of Mormon under them or like planking on a Book of Mormon or something.

It's just kind of a weird image. Yeah, somebody needs to do a video of like playing limbo with the Book of Mormon. This is me crawling under the Book of Mormon. So let's get into the questions. I think it's also important to acknowledge that each of our views of scripture were likely formed by our prior affiliation with the LDS Church.

Is that fair to say, do you think? And how would you characterize the view of scripture that you had as a young person growing up in the LDS Church? Michael, let's go to you first. Yeah, that's a big question there. I mean, a lot of times, you know, this verse will come to mind in a situation. I'm like, oh, you know, the Bible says this. And then I'm like, wait, wait a second.

No, never mind. That's not scripture at all. That's from the Book of Mormon.

You know what I mean? One of the problems I have is I still have this memory of all these other verses that were added in. But I think also, you know, too, like, I mean, my view of scripture has changed radically because I used to view it as something that can just be changed all the time, you know, by new revelation that can come and can supersede it. But now I view scripture as being very stable and very strong. So for the most part, I'd say that my view of scripture has changed quite a bit.

All right, good. Matthew, what do you think? What was your impression of scripture or how would you characterize your view of scripture that you had as a young Latter-day Saint? So as I was thinking about this question, it sounds weird, but I was thinking about how Roman Catholics view scripture, because I think one of the straw men that evangelicals like to make about Roman Catholics is that, you know, their church as a whole just doesn't care about scripture. And I don't think that's a good characterization about them because they do hold scripture in high regard.

It's just that the issue is tradition alongside it. So I think it's very similar to the LDS church in the sense that they do place a lot of emphasis on using scripture, reading scripture, things like that, and applying it in church classes and things like that. So I think we were taught to have respect for scripture and to use scripture and to see it as the word of God. But in a sense, especially when it came to the Bible, if there was something that disagreed with church doctrine, it was seen that, well, prior revelation could be replaced by new revelation. Like Michael was saying, prior revelation could be replaced with new revelation because if it comes from God, you know, God can reveal something new.

And if something is new, then that should be more important than what's old. I think Ezra Taft Benson said that the words of a living prophet are more important than the words of a dead prophet. So that's kind of how I viewed scripture. You know, sometimes scripture might not make sense and so I would get confused and go look at what the new prophet would say. So that was definitely kind of the view that I had of scripture overall is that it was important and that it came from God, especially with the Bible, maybe not perfect in everything, but it's useful and we should study it. So parts of it I kept as I became an evangelical Protestant.

Some things obviously I disagree with now. You know, I was thinking while you were talking there too, Matthew, because, you know, one of the big questions too is like, scripture just has a much broader definition. In Mormonism, it's, you know, it's really just anything that is written in their standard works but I felt like it was anything that the prophet said was scripture as well. And really anything that the Holy Ghost told me, I would have viewed as scripture as well. So I just kind of like, almost any source could have been scripture. But I did have kind of a little bit of a distrust of the Bible too because it's like, yeah, the Bible is scripture but, you know, the Book of Mormon says that plain and precious truths were taken from the Bible. So I usually felt pretty comfortable reading the Bible and I would think, you know, this is pretty much safe to read but then I'd come across something like God is spirit and I would immediately just want to ignore that and it would just jump into my head the defense that I would just think is, well, that's not translated correctly. You know, somehow that got messed up in the translation. I mean, have you guys kind of experienced that too?

Yeah, for sure. And what you were saying earlier too, kind of having this memory of, you know, all of these passages that are Book of Mormon passages and kind of getting those confused sometimes or especially when you hear someone else say them. Like I remember very early on after I left the church, you know, I had a lot of conversations with my dad and he had a lot of questions, you know, about what my views were now and, you know, we would have lots and lots of conversations about religion and, you know, he would kind of say something like, well, the Bible says this. Like you were saying, Michael, he would say, you know, the Bible says, you know, and that's the same as Mormonism, right? And I'd be like, wait a minute. No, that's a Book of Mormon verse. And he's like, are you sure?

And it's like, yes, yes it is. So yeah, I've had that experience and I think, you know, over the years I've done a lot of kind of compare and contrast of trying to think through, you know, what my perceptions were and views of scripture were as I was growing up in the LDS faith and how that's different than my perceptions now. In prep for this episode, I kind of took some notes about things I wanted to talk about. So, you know, one of the things is because of the narrative of how the Book of Mormon came forth, you know, with Joseph Smith receiving plates miraculously from an angel and translating those plates, I kind of had a view of scripture that like it came forth, it comes forth by miraculous means, right? And so I also had this sense that it was something hidden and that's brought forth by way of a prophet, right?

That it's not just some mundane everyday thing that happens, it has to have some miraculous coming forth to the world. And also I kind of had this sense that scripture is always produced within God's officially sanctioned church, that there were, you know, I think I kind of, as a young person, like retrofitted Mormonism onto even my reading of the Old Testament, right? To where I was certain, like if I was reading about the Old Testament prophets, I kind of imagined an organization much like the LDS church, right? Like Isaiah was part of like the first presidency kind of imaginations in my mind.

I think I thought that way. And because there's this idea that scripture is always produced within God's officially sanctioned church or body of people, the revelation of a prophet could effectively render prior scripture obsolete or change its interpretation to be something that's far afield of the original intent. And I also had a sense that the Mormon scriptures were superior to the Bible. And when I've mentioned this to Mormons online, I always get the kind of, what? We don't think that, we don't believe that kind of response, right?

It's always like the, no, no, they sit on the shelf next to one another. But I grew up in the era of Ezra Taft Benson where like the, you know, his talks about like a witness and a warning and the keystone of our religion, you know, and like the quote from Joseph Smith about the Book of Mormon being the most correct of any book on earth. I mean, that was quoted like every Sunday when I was growing up. So, you know, I kind of came by that view, I think honestly that, you know, the Mormon scriptures were kind of viewed to be superior to the Bible and to clarify the Bible. So any problems of interpretation or understanding, if you've got a Bible passage, for example, that seems to kind of contradict with the Book of Mormon passage or a Doctrine and Covenants passage, those are resolved by appealing to modern revelation. You know, it's never the Bible that clarifies the Mormon scriptures. It's always the Mormon scriptures that clarify the Bible. I also had a sense that the only way to approach the question of whether or not something is scripture is to pray about it.

You know, any other methods of testing its reliability weren't on my radar as a young person growing up in the LDS church. Does any of that resonate with you guys as well? Yeah, I mean, that completely resonates with me. Yeah, we were told as Latter-day Saints not to just only pray about the Book of Mormon, but also the Bible and the Doctrine and Covenants, you know, to test, to pray about whatever their leaders were saying, to pray, you know, to feel whether it's true or not from the Holy Ghost.

So, yeah, I agree. And maybe we'll talk about it later, but I thought it was really interesting what you were saying about where you kind of expanded on this idea that if something is problematic or unclear in the Bible, that you would always go to modern revelation to kind of resolve that issue. I thought that was really interesting because there is, there's like underneath that rubble, there's kind of like, there's like a glimmer of truth to that because, and maybe I should just wait to talk about it till later, but I think when you're talking about the Bible, you know, if there's something unclear on a specific topic versus another passage that's more clear, then you would, you should, I think you should defer to the clearer passage, you know, but it doesn't mean that that clearer passage will negate the unclear passage.

It just sheds more light than the unclear passage would. So the LDS kind of standard where it's like, well, the new always trumps the old is something that's similar, but quite significantly different. Well, and what's interesting too is, as Latter-day Saints, if we came across something that we didn't agree with in the Bible, you know, you never went to scholarship or to see what the original language said.

You never did that. It was always, oh, what does the Joseph Smith translation say? Or, you know, like you guys are saying, what does the prophet say about this? Or what do the LDS scholars say? Like we didn't, I didn't care about what anybody else in the world said, unless it happened to support my beliefs, then it was all good. And if it went against my beliefs, I didn't want to see it.

Yeah. Just to kind of expand on that, you know, some of those themes, you know, modern revelation, the LDS scriptures kind of being the interpretive key to the Bible, you know, and kind of the waters that I was swimming in as a young Latter-day Saint, you know, I don't know how much, if at all, you guys remember the Ezra Taft Benson years, but it was a very, very heavy push on the Book of Mormon. I mean, I remember on my mission reading his book, A Witness and a Warning, which was like a collection of, I think it was 11 or 12 of his general conference addresses about the Book of Mormon from like the 1970s through the 1980s. And I mean, he really pushed Doctrine and Covenants 84, 54 to 57 that says, and your minds in times past have been darkened because of unbelief and because you have treated lightly the things that you have received, which vanity and unbelief have brought the whole church under condemnation. And this condemnation resteth upon the children of Zion and even all, and they shall remain under this condemnation until they repent and remember the new covenant, even the Book of Mormon and the former commandments, which I've given them not only to say, but to do according to that which I have written. So, you know, in that time period, it was, you know, hey, we're not, you know, the kind of the message that was given to the church was we're not giving enough emphasis to the Book of Mormon.

We need to one, share it more with people and two, read it more as people. And so that was kind of the push and I continued even through the Gordon B. Hinckley years and up until almost the time when we left as a family, you know, there seems to be always a push like, let's read the Book of Mormon in a month, right, as a ward. But there was never a push to say, hey, let's read the Bible in three months. That kind of push was just never there. I just find that interesting.

Yeah. I was going to mention too that I so I kind of had some years of inactivity starting around high school and then I kind of had my soul searching time in my life when I started college. So that's when I started kind of going back into the church when I was 19, 20 ish. And that was in 2005. So I started going back to church and being really active late that year.

And I think that was the year that Gordon B. Hinckley gave the Book of Mormon Challenge. And so they're like, well, how far are you? And I'm like, how far am I and what? Because I hadn't even heard of the challenge. So I tried to catch up, but I didn't finish in time.

I finished sometime the next year. But yeah, there was just like a huge push and a huge excitement for everyone to read the Book of Mormon. And people were talking about all the blessings they had and their testimony growing, things like that. And it was kind of like it was as I've already seen, I thought it was exciting, especially because that was me, you know, for me, I felt like my spirituality was growing, coming back into the church and getting back into it.

And I just saw everybody's excitement. So that was exciting to me at the time. But yeah, it is interesting when you don't really think about that, you know, you know, as Latter-day Saints, I never asked myself, hey, why don't we do this for the Bible next year or the year after that or something? You know, it just never really crossed my mind.

Yeah. Michael, any thoughts on that? I mean, you guys are pretty much saying everything that's on my mind, too, because I just I just remember like every there's always so much special attention given even to the Book of Mormon. And but I mean, I really love the New Testament just because of things that happened to me on my mission, you know, running into so many evangelical Christians who actually made me really believe in the Bible. And, you know, one of the things I really liked was that the the Bible used to have an introduction that said, or I'm sorry, the Book of Mormon's introduction used to say that it was a volume of that contained the fullness of the gospel, as did the Bible.

I don't know if you remember saying that, but the new edition doesn't say that anymore. And I think it just really pushes the the idea that, you know, the Bible was was broken and the Book of Mormon is there to fix it. And they used to they used to always do that diagram in Sunday school where they would put, you know, the the point on the on the board and they'd say like, this is the Bible. And as you can see, you can draw like infinity lines going any direction through this book. But if you put the Book of Mormon, then they put another dot. It's just a straight line going right through and it makes everything so clear. And yeah, that's that's just how I viewed. That's how I viewed it too. I'm like, the Bible is great. You can find the truth in the Bible, but it's so much easier with the Book of Mormon and the Doctrine and Covenants and everything.

So I definitely held it in a higher regard. You are listening to Outer Brightness, a podcast for post Mormons who are drawn by God to walk with Jesus rather than turn away. Outer Brightness, Outer Brightness, Outer Brightness.

There's no weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth here, except when Michael's hangry that is hangry that is hangry that is. We were all born and raised in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah, more commonly referred to as the Mormon faith. All of us have left that religion and have been drawn to faith in Jesus Christ based on biblical teachings. The name of our podcast, Outer Brightness, reflects John 1-9, which calls Jesus the true light which gives light to everyone. We have found life beyond Mormonism to be brighter than we were told it would be. And the light we have is not our own.

It comes to us from without, thus, Outer Brightness. Our purpose is to share our journeys of faith and what God has done in drawing us to his own. We have conversations about all aspects of that transition, the fears, challenges, joys, and everything in between. We're glad you found us, and we hope you'll stick around.

I don't know if you want to move on, but I had a thought that was interesting. You know, in Protestant Christianity, we talk of our various denominations and churches. Like, for instance, I'm part of a Reformed Baptist church.

Well, what does that mean? It means that we kind of follow the Reformed tradition to an extent, except for in the cases of the covenants and sacraments, including baptism. So we name ourselves that because we agree with all the essentials of the rest of Protestant Christianity. But we just mention that because those are kind of a couple of our distinctives, although it's kind of strange that we pick those two things. But if we were to follow suit with the same thing, because Latter-day Saints, a lot of them, when I talked to them when I was a Latter-day Saint, the focus was on the Book of Mormon because that's what differentiates us from Christianity and everyone else.

That's what's unique about us. And so we should focus on that. And so I just had this thought come to my mind where it's like, OK, what if we follow the same thing where it's like, OK, rest of Christianity reads the Bible. So every Sunday, we're only going to talk about baptism and why we're Baptists. That's all we're going to focus on. We're not going to talk about the rest of the Bible or not talk about the rest of this. We'll talk about how it's great, but we won't actually read from it. And if we do, maybe a couple of passages here and there, we're not going to really focus on that. We're going to focus only on baptism.

You know, I was thinking that thought came to my mind and I'm like, I was just thinking that's such a strange concept. You know, we as Christians now, Protestant Christians, we don't really think like that. But that's kind of how it was when we were Latter-day Saints in regards to the Book of Mormon. Yeah, that's good.

That's good. So kind of moving to the next question. In what ways is the view that you had of scripture as a Latter-day Saint different than the view you have now? Matthew, let's go with you first on this one. So I touched on it a little bit, but I kind of saw scripture as something that was replaceable or something that's important. But we weren't really taught that it was infallible or inerrant.

We never really use those terms in the LDS church. We just spoke of it as the Word of God and that the Book of Mormon is the most correct of any book on the earth and the keystone of our religion. So I'm not even sure if I were to ask myself 20 years ago if I thought the Book of Mormon was inerrant or infallible.

I'm not sure what I would have said. But it's probably the closest thing to inerrancy or infallibility. And you kind of see revelation is something that, like you said, Paul, everyone can – it might have been Michael – it's revelation is something everyone can tap into to an extent. And so I think maybe for other Latter-day Saints, it might be different. But for myself, I kind of had my own canon in my head where it's like, okay, the Book of Mormon is the most authoritative and most correct and then below that or maybe equal to that are like Doctrine and Covenants, Pearl of Great Price, somewhere below that but pretty high up probably is like the Bible. And I'm not really sure how the words of the prophets fit in there, probably even higher because they're newer and new revelation, things like that, and we're supposed to follow them today.

So in my head, there's kind of like a hierarchy of authority as to what has most authority over my life as a Latter-day Saint. But as for that, now I'm a Christian and I kind of studied all these issues out, I thought about it. I thought, well, God has specifically said in Scripture that he cannot lie, that God is a God of truth. And in 2 Timothy 3, 16 and 17, it speaks of how Scripture is God-breathed, literally theopneustos, which is a word that Paul made up to say literally, God-breathed, breathed out by God. So Scripture is the breath, the words coming out of God's mouth, you know, figuratively.

So it's so intimately connected to God and his nature and his character. And so we can't separate Scripture from who God is because it comes from God. So I just have a much higher regard for the Bible overall. I hold to inerrancy and infallibility of Scripture, inerrancy specifically of the autographs, original writings of Scripture.

And I don't know how much we want to get into textual criticism, that's a huge topic. But you know, so I see Scripture as much more authoritative, it's all of it is inspired. So I can't just say, well, New Testament is newer, so that, you know, that replaces the Old Testament. Certainly, the New Testament interprets the Old Testament, but you can't make sense of the New Testament without the Old Testament.

So we have to take both. So I just see all of Scripture as God-breathed and all Scripture as useful. Perhaps we don't follow all of it. For instance, a lot of the Mosaic laws and commandments, you know, that were fulfilled in Christ, we aren't obligated to live those, but all Scripture is useful. Let me quote 2 Timothy 3, 16, 17 real quick. All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. So Scripture is just – it's all breathed out by God, not just parts of it, and it's all authoritative, and it's all true, and it's what we need to be complete, equipped for every good work. So there's nothing – it's not only is it inerran and infallible, but it's sufficient, sufficient for what we need to know God, to know how to live a life that's pleasing to God, to glorify God. It's all in Scripture. So to sum it all up, I see now Scripture is infallible, inerrant, and sufficient. Nice. When I was LDS, you know, I saw the Scripture also as just being an ever-evolving thing.

You know, I was always waiting. I read general conference. I was like, man, maybe they're going to – this is going to be the conference where they unveil new Scripture. In fact, I was just talking to one of my LDS friends the other day, asking him what he thought the big reveal in conference was going to be. And he's like, well, you know, maybe it's new Scripture, you know. So that's definitely a thought that I think goes through a lot of Latter-day Saints heads, but I was always anticipating more. And I always thought that more Scripture was necessary because we're continually living in a different age than before, you know. So even the Book of Mormon to me was a little bit obsolete because I'm living in a different time and I need Scripture specifically for me. And that's one of the reasons that I thought the patriarchal blessing was so cool because it was like Scripture directly to me for my life. But you know, of course, I believed in an open canon. And I would have said, like, you know, God – why would a God who loves us stop speaking to us? You know, the fact that he continues to talk to us is just proof that he loves us. And of course, he wants us to have more of his word. And there was a point where I came across Harold B. Lee's – a quote from Harold B. Lee where he was basically saying, you know, if somebody teaches something that is not the standard works, then it is not true.

And I really liked that. I kind of adopted a view of prima scriptura so that the Scriptures were actually more authoritative than even the leaders of the church, but that they were still useful as long as they were in line with the standard works. But then I started having problems because they started saying things that were contradicting what the standard works said or changing something that the standard works said, and it seemed like nobody else could see it except for me. But as time's gone on, I don't – you know, I definitely believe in solo scriptura now.

And I do believe that the Scriptures are reliable. We don't need more. I think that what we have is sufficient. And I think some of the problems with an open canon is just, you know, it's never – you never know if what you have is true or accurate or complete because next year's revelation could erase it and translate those things in a completely different vein.

Yeah, definitely. It's kind of an ever-changing target when you're trying to understand what should be doctrine. And it's a different view than with, you know, Protestant evangelical Christianity where you have the Bible as the solid source of truth, the solid source of doctrine, the solid source of God's Word. And so definitely a different view. I think, you know, one of the ways that my view now is different than when I was a Latter-day Saint is that I believe that Scripture is a historical artifact. It can be studied as such. So like each book of the Bible has a particular historical context that can be studied to provide insight into the thought and purpose of the human authors.

And I find that fascinating. You know, with the Book of Mormon, you can't do that because once the principal characters in the Book of Mormon reach the shores of the American continent, right, there's zero context that can be studied. The civilizations of the ancient Americas don't align with what the Book of Mormon presents. And so looking at that context, I know people have tried, I know Mormon scholars have tried, but I don't find that convincing.

I don't find that there's actually connection there that is taken seriously by scholars outside of the Mormon world. So I came to that view through study and I'll touch on it later, but I take seriously the fact that Scripture is a divine human production and that's fascinating to me, right? You can get into the personality of the Apostle Paul. You can see and understand the ministry of Jesus and how he interacted with people because they are fully-fledged historical individuals that kind of jump off the page of the Bible as you read. Whereas the Book of Mormon was interesting, but I've never felt that way about the characters of the Book of Mormon.

They're flat compared comparatively with the characters of the Bible, but there's a book that I really like that R.C. Sproul wrote called Scripture Alone, the Evangelical Doctrine, and in it he kind of touches on the idea of inspiration, Matthew, that you touched on, and he says, you know, the process of inspiration did not make the Bible writers automatons, for their books revealed differences of vocabulary, style, and other matters of variation between one human author and another. And that, to me, when I really started to dig into and understand biblical scholarship was fascinating to me because it was something that was completely missing from my understanding of Scripture previously. And I think the biggest way that my view of Scripture has changed is that I believe that biblical Scripture is infallible. There's a couple of different methods that people kind of use to describe that doctrine of biblical infallibility in like a logical syllogism. One is more of like a presuppositional method, and that would be, you know, premise A, the Bible is the infallible word of God.

And again, I'm quoting from Sproul here. Premise B, the Bible attests to its own infallibility. To see the self-attestation of the Scripture is an infallible attestation. Conclusion, the Bible is the infallible word of God.

And you know, that's good enough and that's good and fine, but as Sproul notes, you know, this setting it up that way is holy. It opens one up holy to the charge of circular reasoning. And so for me, I kind of come to it from a classical method perspective, and I've seen, you know, others like Timothy Keller talk about it in this way as well. The classical method would set up the syllogism a little bit differently. Premise A, the Bible is a basically reliable and trustworthy document. Premise B, on the basis of this reliable document, we have sufficient evidence to believe confidently that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. Premise C, Jesus Christ being the Son of God is an infallible authority. Premise D, Jesus Christ teaches that the Bible is more than generally trustworthy. It is the very word of God.

Premise E, that the word in that it comes from God is utterly trustworthy because God is utterly trustworthy. And then the conclusion, on the basis of the infallible authority of Jesus Christ, the church believes the Bible to be utterly trustworthy, that is, infallible. So I kind of came to my belief in the Bible kind of through that side door, right? Not in a presuppositional way. When I left Mormonism, and we'll kind of get into it, I really had to take a hard look at whether it made sense to continue believing in the Bible. And if it did make sense, why?

That why question was really important to me. And as I studied, like I said, I came to see scripture as a historical artifact, and that kind of goes to that first premise, right? That the Bible is basically a reliable and trustworthy document, when studied in its historical context, which it can be, that the Book of Mormon doesn't have any option for that. You just have to take it on faith that Joseph Smith had plates, that he translated plates. There is no textual or manuscript tradition supporting any of the writings in the Book of Mormon that you can look to. Michael, you mentioned original languages. You can't do any kind of original language study with the Book of Mormon like you can with the Bible.

You can't dig into Reformed Egyptian like you can with Greek and Hebrew with the Bible. So when I realized that difference, and it is a huge difference, it changed everything for me. So. Yeah, that's great. That's one book that's been on my mental bucket list. I got to check that out.

Yeah, it's really great. The way he lays out the doctrine of scripture alone is really good. There's a lot of my Reformed brothers that see classical apologetics as like a waste of time. They're like, oh, well, if you're Reformed, you got to be a pre-sup, man.

You got to be pre-sup. That's the cool thing. But I'm flexible on that. I think a lot of people come to the Lord based on all kinds of different argumentation and different types of apologetic methods. So yeah, I'll have to check that out. You guys know something that's interesting is you were just mentioning the original languages. There's this verse that kind of caused some cognitive dissonance for me in the Book of Mormon in Mormon chapter 9 verses 32 and 33. It says, And now, behold, we've written this record according to our knowledge in the characters which are called among us the Reformed Egyptian, being handed down and altered by us according to our manner of speech. And if our plates had been sufficiently large, we should have written in Hebrew, but the Hebrew has been altered by us also, etc. But basically saying that like to conserve room, they're writing in Egyptian instead of Hebrew, but Egyptian hieroglyphics take up more space than Hebrew does. That's interesting.

That's something I had never really considered. We thank you for tuning into this episode of the Outer Brightness podcast. We'd love to hear from you. Please visit the Outer Brightness podcast page on Facebook. Feel free to send us a message there with comments or questions by clicking send a message at the top of the page, and we would appreciate it if you give the page a like. We also have an Outer Brightness group on Facebook, where you can join and interact with us and others as we discuss the podcast, past episodes, and suggestions for future episodes, etc. You can also send us an email at outerbrightness at gmail.com.

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Stay bright, Flyerflies. Lord, to whom shall we go, you have the words of eternal life and we have believed and have come to know that you are the Holy One of God, the Word made fresh, the risen Son. Heaven and earth will pass away, but the Word of the Lord endures forever, where all of the word of our God through ages remains. Lord, you promised that we, as your church, would remain upon this rock, and the gates of heaven and earth will be filled to keep your word unspoiled in purity. Heaven and earth will pass away, but the Word of the Lord endures forever, where all of the words of eternal life are from your mouth, will not return empty, but does what you desire. Lord, we hear your word and believe in you. Heaven and earth will pass away, but the Word of the Lord endures forever, where all of the Word of the Lord endures forever, where all of the word of God through ages remains.