Heart of the Matter

Introduction

Welcome to Heart of the MatterTGNN’s original show where Shawn McCraney deconstructed religion and developed fulfilled theology.. I’m Shawn McCraneyFounder of TGNN and developer of the fulfilled perspective—calling people to faith outside of religion., your host.

LIVE CALL-IN: (We’ll give you the number to call in a few minutes.)

EMAIL: Heart@TV20.TV

WEBSITE: www.bornagainmormon.com

REBROADCAST IDAHO

BOOK: Born-again Mormon: Moving Toward Christian Authenticity

SHOUT OUT to all the PRISONERS out there: Prisoners to SINMissing the mark of faith and love—no punishment, just lost growth or peace., Prisoners at the Point of the Mountain – Hey ya, brothers! And prisoners of RELIGION. In each case, we send out our love, a heartfelt “Howdy Partner” and remind you that the answer to genuine and lasting FREEDOM is but a heart-felt prayer away.

Also want to THANK each of you for your emails of support and love and sharing the show with others.

Every week we’re getting reports of people coming to know the Lord on a personal and intimate basis and being SAVED! So with you, we PRAISE GOD.

Finally, I want to give a grateful shout out to RGR for this cool “Heart of the Matter” shirt I’m wearing. You guys are the best.

Alright, let’s begin with a PRAYER. Important topic tonight. Thank you, Lord.

Temptation of Jesus

In Matthew chapter four, Jesus had just finished fasting forty days in the wilderness and was hungry. Fittingly, the Devil came to tempt Him with three specific temptations. Each of Satan’s offers were met with rejection by Jesus. Each of these rejections were prefaced by Jesus saying, “It is written.”

To what was Jesus referring when he said, “It is written?” How could Jesus trust such ancient writings? Why didn’t Satan question Jesus about the reliability of what he was quoting?

Challenges to the Bible

We stand today in a very precarious place today. Since time immemorial critical men and women have attacked what has been written—the Word of God—as faulty, insufficient, untrustworthy, and contradictory. Scholars of supposed higher criticism have consistently challenged the Word of God with their facts. . . (beat) . . . time and time again they have consistently been proven wrong.

Now we EXPECT the world to attack the Word of God. We EXPECT faithless academics, the sinful, and the proud to hate it. But it is especially disconcerting when people of supposed Christian faith join in the fray and discount, legitimize, and even bastardize the Holy Word of God.

Mormonism has clearly been among the scoffers and it is my opinion that the GREATEST crime the LDS Church has corporately committed is influencing its members to distrust the Bible. This is unconscionable.

Trusting the Bible

Tonight’s show is dedicated to defending the Bible and presenting it to you as something you can wholly trust, wholly believe, and wholly rely. I am committed to the idea that when it says, “It is written,” It was written. By men, inspired of God, with God’s message and we can trust it today.

So let’s get into it by laying out a very general outline which lends to the Bible’s authenticity and strength, not weakness.

First, the Bible did not come down to us from heaven via fax machine. God doesn’t usually work this way. God breathed it into existence, using human beings to bring it forth and out. These human beings were different men, with differing missions, backgrounds, and insights.

Sixty-six different books written by forty different human revelators.

The Consistency and Authority of Biblical Scripture

From three different continents, in at least three different languages, over a period of 1500 years is an amazing fact! Why? Because it does not contradict itself. And every record contextually supports other records claims. This is frankly amazing.

Why did Moses write? So we could consider it untrustworthy? Why did God have prophets record their revelations? So believers could read it and wonder what was from Him and what was not? So we could question every word? So we could doubt it? Prophets wrote it, Jesus quoted it, and I believe it. Period.

Authority and Authenticity of Biblical Books

Two: The individual books did not derive their “authority” and “authenticity” as being of God because they were selected to be included in the Bible. Each of the books is from God and simply waited to be gathered and included in His Holy Book. In other words, men, or a church, or a council, did not make the books of the Bible inspired because they chose to include them, but they were put in the Bible because God authored them in the first place. GET IT? There’s a huge difference between writings “becoming” inspired because they are included in the Bible and books being included in the Bible because they were inspired by God in the first place. The cynic, the unbeliever, takes the former position, the faithful take the latter.

Three: The first five books of the Bible, the Pentateuch, were already considered authoritative scripture by the time of Ezra in the fifth century BCE.

The Word of God and Its Transmission

Did you know that God considers His Word of higher import than His own name? (Psalms 138:2) “for thou hast magnified thy word above all thy name.” Think about this, attackers of the Bible! Consider this, you arrogant scoffers who question the Word. Do you actually believe in a God who would speak His Word, have faithful men record them, and then not have the ability to see that they came through to this generation as He desires? This is sick, man-made faithlessness. Thinking bent on getting people to take another course. The Bible must be called into question before men can effectively introduce their own philosophies to the world. It must. And it has.

Four: Without going into great detail, Old Testament scribes and scholars were exacting, tedious, and relentless in transcribing the Word of God. If a mistake was made, the whole parchment or scroll was tossed away immediately. Writing the Name of God was a particularly precarious action where they would trash the whole thing if God’s name was fouled up. When the scribe finished copying a particular book, he would count all the words and letters it contained. Then he checked the count against the manuscript tally from which he was working. He also noted the middle word of the book and the middle letter of the book and compared it to the scroll. Through these careful checks, errors were caught and corrected. Older manuscripts were burned as newer ones were completed, not because of changes, but because of wear and tear. The Dead Sea Scroll findings proved by a thousand years earlier how exact the process of writing sacred script was.

Five: Around 285 B.C., seventy Jewish scholars came to Alexandria and under the direction of the Ptolomies translated the Old Testament (what the Jews call the TANACK) from Hebrew into Koine Greek. The resulting translation is called the Septuagint. It provided a tremendous bridge between the Hebrew and Greek worlds and by New Testament times was the most widely used edition of the Old Testament. The existence of the Septuagint essentially solidified the existence of the Old Testament books.

Six: There was a time span of approximately 400 years between the Old and New Testament writings (called the intertestamentary period) where the heavens were silent. During this time, many books of the Apocrypha were written. Apocryphal books were not considered inspired when the Bible as we know it was compiled. However, they were included in the Septuagint and remain today in the Roman Catholic Church Version of the Bible by command of Augustine in the late 4th Century. Neither the Jews nor Christians of Palestine ever accepted the apocryphal books as scripture.

Seven: The terms “Old Testament” and “New Testament” originated with the Prophet Jeremiah (Jeremiah 31:31). The word “testament” means covenant and Jesus, being the long-awaited Messiah, made the “New Covenant” with God’s people. The Old Covenant

Prophecies Pointing to Jesus

The New Covenant, amidst parables and historical events, provides the fulfillment of these Old Testament prophecies.

Some of the prophecies found in the Old Testament include:

Jesus would be betrayed by a friend (Psalm 41:9)
Jesus would be sold for 30 pieces of silver (Zechariah 11:12)
Jesus would be forsaken by His disciples (Zechariah 13:7)
Jesus would be silent before His accusers (Isaiah 53:7)
Lots would be cast for His garments (Psalm 22:18)
There would be darkness over the land (Amos 8:9)
Jesus would be buried in a rich man's tomb (Isaiah 53:9)

By the time Jesus was 12 years old, the Old Testament had been translated, copied and recopied, and brought forth over a 1400-year period – in other words, Jesus read and quoted from the writings that were more older to Him than the New Testament recordings were to our generation (all things considered). He knew it and taught it by the time He was 12. Why? He trusted it! Do you recall what Jesus said in Mark 13:31?

“HEAVEN AND EARTH WILL PASS AWAY BUT MY WORD WILL NEVER PASS AWAY” (MARK 13:31)
Mark 13:31 .

The “not” pass away – ou me – is a double negative strengthening the denial to its utmost: it states it will “never-ever, not ever, in no way ever, impossible for them to, cannot ever” pass away. Did God not only lose the power to keep His Word pure but to fulfill His promises? NO! He said His Words will not ever or in anyway pass away! I trust this. I trust God is true to His promises. Where do you place your trust? In your opinions? In your notions and feelings? In books without ANY history or substantiation that you have been taught are divine?

The Continuation from Old to New Testament

The Gospels of the New Testament – Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John – are actually a continuation of the Old Testament. They speak of Jesus coming to earth, His ministry among God’s chosen people, and their rejection of Him. Jesus came to showed them that He was the ONLY way because He was the only one righteous. His words made all men and women sinners. His words condemn each of us, hopefully resigning us to the fact that we NEED Him. The actual New Testament doesn’t really begin until Chapter Two of the book of Acts (which is the Day of Pentecost).

After the Day of Pentecost, those firsthand witnesses of the Lord Jesus and those closely associated with them, wrote letters and revelations as inspired by the Holy Spirit. Before these writings were ever collected and included in what we call the New Testament they were considered inspired. In 2nd Peter 3:15, Peter equates Paul’s Letters to scripture.

(LISTEN to what Peter says!)

2nd Peter 3:15 . . . even as our beloved brother Paul also according to the wisdom given unto him hath written unto you; 16 As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things; in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction.

Canonical Writings

From Genesis to Revelation, the purpose of the Bible was to point to Jesus. Nothing more in terms of writing is needed to accomplish this. The Old Testament said He was coming. The Gospels said He came. The New Testament said how to follow Him in Spirit and Truth. What else had to be said?

It’s not that God has stopped speaking to men and women today. Of course He speaks to us – by His Spirit and His Word. But CANONICAL writings are another thing. The Word Canon, in classical Greek, is properly understood as a straight rod, "a rule" in the widest sense, "the rule of the Church," "the rule of faith," "the rule of truth." When the canon or “rule of truth” is complete what is the need for more – especially when additions are introduced that are in OPPOSITION to existing, historically accurate texts of God?

There were several factors early Christian leaders took into consideration regarding what to include and what to exclude from “the rule of truth” or canon. Here are the major considerations: the book had to have a history of being included in Christian worship. The book had to have a connection to an apostle of Christ. The book had to evidence

Consistency and Trust in Biblical Texts

Power in the lives of believers. The book had to maintain a “consistency of doctrine.”

(In the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas, it quotes Jesus as saying): “Lucky is the lion that the human will eat, so that the lion will become human. And foul is human that the lion will eat, and the lion still will become human.”

Doesn’t sound like consistent doctrine does it? Well, it isn’t. So it was excluded.

• The book had to ratify Christian virtue and spiritual values. The books had to be in harmony/unity regardless of prose or style.

Quoting again from verse 14 in the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas it reads: “If you fast, you bring sin upon yourselves, and if you pray, you will be condemned, and if you give to charity, you will harm your spirits.”

Obviously, this clap-trap is outside the harmony and unity of the other inspired books . . . so it was excluded.

Historical Compilation of the New Testament

Tertullian states that by 150 A.D. the Church in Rome had compiled a list of New Testament books that matches what we would call the Bible today.

The Muratonian Canon fragment dating from 170 A.D. lists the same New Testament books that we have in the Protestant Bible today.

If we take all the writings of the early Church fathers Irenaeus, Justin Martyr, Polycarp, Ignatius, and Clement, all but eleven verses of our PRESENT NEW TESTAMENT could be reconstructed and compiled through their writings alone. In other words, the entire New Testament text, with the exception of eleven verses, is quoted in the early church writers' writings.

Before we go to our final thought on God’s Word, let’s open up the phone lines and get the operators sorting through the calls.

The number is (801) 973-TV20. That’s 973-8820.

The Reliability of Biblical Translation

Okay. Twelve.

The Bible can either be wholly trusted or it cannot. There is no middle ground. It is either translated correctly or it is not.

Why do I say this?

In, The Bible as an Insufficient Guide, LDS Apostle Orson Pratt said: “add all this imperfect information to the uncertainty of the translation, and who, in his right mind, could, for one moment, suppose the Bible in its present form to be a perfect guide? Who knows that even one verse of the whole Bible has escaped pollution, so as to convey the same sense that it did in the original.” Orson Pratt, LDS Apostle, The Bible as an Insufficient Guide, 1851, p. 47.

The purpose of the Bible is to point people to Jesus, the salvation He offers, and the Christian walk He prescribes.

To state or infer that the Bible is polluted, fallible, or unreliable, is to create doubt in the minds of anyone who has listened to such a position.

The Impact on Faith

What is the Heart of the Matter result? Every time a Latter-day Saint reads the Bible, they discount it in their heart if not their mind. Every time they read a passage that causes them to think, they put it in the “not correctly translated bin.” Every time the Word causes them to wonder, they think of corrupted texts, evil copyists, and uninspired philosophies of men. And what is the result? A bastardized view of Jesus, of the salvations He offers, and of the Christian Walk He prescribes.

It is time for Latter-day Saints to look their ideas of Jesus in the face and instead of turning to the logic and wisdom of Man, but to turn to the word and say confidently and faithfully “It is written.” “It is written.” “It is written.”

(BEAT)

All right, let’s go to the phones!

Other Thoughts

There are NO ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPTS OF THE BIBLE LEFT TODAY. To many, this is a delightful fact because with it they attempt to build a case against the validity, authenticity, and trustworthiness of the Bible.

But to put this in the proper perspective, imagine

The Bible's Authenticity

That the original constitution of the United States of America was suddenly destroyed. Would this mean we wouldn’t have a clue as to its contents? HARDLY, because from the replications, the commentaries, the particles, and the condemnations of this historical document, the whole could easily and accurately be reconstructed. The same is true of the Bible.

From handwritten documents, scholarly references, papyrus scrolls, uncials, miniscuals, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the dozens of thousands of fragmentary pieces of Holy writ, the Bible can and has been authenticated. It’s historically supported. It’s genetically proven. Its diverse and expansive commentaries are in complete harmony with all other books therein.

Historical Milestones of the Bible

The oldest copy of the complete New Testament, written in Greek, dates to about 350 A.D. and is called the Codex Sinaiticus. Jerome took the established books of the Old and New Covenants at around 385 A.D. and translated them into the Latin Vulgate. Sometime before 1228, Steven Langdon created chapter divisions. In 1384, John Wycliffe translated the Latin Bible in English. The Catholic church denounced Wycliffe as heretical because it was forbidden to translate the Bible.

In 1455 the first reproduction of the Bible was made. It was called the Guttenberg Bible. Forty-eight still exist today. Around 1530, William Tyndale believed everyone should have a chance to read the Bible, not just the few who understood Latin. So he translated it into English and had it reproduced. His Bible was burned as untrue, and he was arrested and imprisoned as a heretic before being executed by strangulation in Antwerp before they burned his body at the stake in 1536.

Translations and Versions

The Miles Coverdale Bible was the first to move the Apocryphal books to a separate section called “noncanonicall” in 1535. The Geneva Bible, in 1560, began to include some chapter and verse divisions. The first Bible printed in the United States was the Aiken Bible which congress authorized in 1781. In 1928, an American printer decided to put the direct quotations of Jesus in red ink, coining the term “it’s a red letter day” in American nomenclature.

In 1952 The Revised Standard Version came out and modernized the King James Version using current biblical scholarship to determine the underlying Greek and Hebrew texts. Not much has changed in this wonderful, beautiful, life-altering Word of God through all the millennia, through all the translations, through all the copying, and amidst all the attempts to kill it dead.

Jesus said in John 10:35

“ . . . the scripture cannot be broken.”

Praise God. It is either true or it is not.

LDS Quotes Against the Bible

1. The most reliable way to measure the accuracy of any biblical passage is not by comparing different texts, but by comparison with the Book of Mormon and modern-day revelations. — First Presidency, LDS Church News, June 20, 1992. p. 3.

Add all this imperfect information to the uncertainty of the translation, and who, in his right mind, could, for one moment, suppose the Bible in its present form to be a perfect guide? Who knows that even one verse of the whole Bible has escaped pollution, so as to convey the same sense that it did in the original. – Orson Pratt, LDS Apostle, The Bible as an Insufficient Guide, 1851, p. 47.

The Bible bears true witness of God and His gospel as far as it is translated correctly. Many plain and precious things have been deleted, however; and the Book of Mormon is the means, provided by divine wisdom, to pour forth the gospel word as it was given in perfection to the ancients. It has come to preserve and sustain the Bible, not distort or dilute its message . . . . Satan guided his servants in taking many plain and precious things, and many of the covenants of the Lord, from the Bible, so that men would stumble and fall and lose their souls. When these truths and doctrines and covenants are restored through the Book of Mormon, what may we expect from Satan and from his servants? Their natural reaction – their craft is in danger! – will be to poison the minds of men against the Nephite scripture, so they will continue to stumble as they rely on the Bible.

Facts on the Bible

The Bible is the name given to the revelation of God to man contained in sixty-six books or pamphlets, bound together and forming one book and only one, for it has in reality one author and one purpose and plan, and is the development of one scheme of the redemption of man.

Its Names

(1) The Bible, i.e. The Book, from the Greek "ta biblia," the books. The word is derived from a root designating the inner bark of the linden tree, on which the ancients wrote their books. It is the book as being superior to all other books. But the application of the word BIBLE to the collected books of the Old and New Testaments is not to be traced farther back than the fifth century of our era. (2) The Scriptures, i.e. the writings, as recording what was spoken by God. (3) The Oracles, i.e. the things spoken, because the Bible is what God spoke to man, and hence also called (4) The Word. (5) The Testaments or Covenants, because it is the testimony of God to man, the truths to which God bears witness; and is also the covenant or agreement of God with man for his salvation. (6) The Law, to express that it contains God's commands to men.

Composition

The Bible consists of two great parts, called the Old and New Testaments, separated by an interval of nearly four hundred years. These Testaments are further divided into sixty-six books, thirty-nine in the Old Testament and twenty-seven in the New. These books are a library in themselves being written in every known form old literature. Twenty-two of them are historical, five are poetical, eighteen are prophetical, twenty-one are epistolary. They contain logical arguments, poetry, songs and hymns, history, biography, stories, parables, fables, eloquence, law, letters and philosophy. There are at least thirty-six different authors, who wrote in three continents, in many countries, in three languages, and from every possible human standpoint. Among these authors were kings, farmers, mechanics, scientific men, lawyers, generals, fishermen, ministers and priests, a tax-collector, a doctor, some rich, some poor, some city bred, some country born–thus touching all the experiences of men extending over 1500 years.

Unity

And yet the Bible is but one book, because God was its real author, and therefore, though he added new revelations as men could receive them, he never had to change what was once revealed. The Bible is a unit, because (1) It has but one purpose, the salvation of men. (2) The character of God is the same. (3) The moral law is the same. (4) It contains the development of one great scheme of salvation.

Original Languages

The Old Testament was written in Hebrew, a Shemitic language, except that parts of the books of Ezra

Ezr 5:8; 6:12; 7:12-26

and of Daniel

Da 2:4-7,28

and one verse in Jeremiah

Jer 10:11

were written in the Chaldee language. The New Testament is written wholly in Greek.

Ancient Manuscripts of the Original

There are no ancient Hebrew manuscripts older than the tenth century, but we know that these are in the main correct, because we have a translation of the Hebrew into Greek, called the Septuagint, made nearly three hundred years before Christ. Our Hebrew Bibles are a reprint from what is called the Masoretic text. The ancient Hebrew had only the consonant printed, and the vowels were vocalized in pronunciation, but were not written. Some Jewish scholars living at Tiberias, and at Sora by the Euphrates, from the sixth to the twelfth century, punctuated the Hebrew text, and wrote is the vowel points and other tone-marks to aid in the reading of the Hebrew; and these, together with notes of various kinds, they called Masora (tradition), hence the name Masoretic text. Of the Greek of the New Testament there are a number of ancient manuscripts They are divided into two kinds, the Uncials, written wholly in capitals, and the Cursives, written in a running hand. The chief of these are– (1) the Alexandrian (codex Alexandrinus, marked A), so named because it…

Ancient Manuscripts

was found in Aiexandria in Egypt, in 1628. It date back to A.D. 350, and is now in the British Museum.

(2) The Vatican (codex Vaticanus, B), named from the Vatican library at Rome, where it is kept. Its date is A.D. 300 to 325.

(3) The Sinaitic (codex Sinaiticus) so called from the convent of St. Catherine on Mount Sinai, there it was discovered by or Tichendorf in 1844. It is now at St. Petersburg Russia. This is one of the earliest best of all the manuscripts.

Bible Translations

VI. TRANSLATIONS.–The Old Testament was translated into Greek by a company of learned Jews at Alexandria, who began their labor about the year B.C. 286. It is called the Septuagint, i.e. the seventy, from the tradition that it was translated by seventy (more exactly seventy-two) translators. The Vulgate, or translation of the Bible into Latin by Jerome, A.D. 385-405, is the authorized version of the Roman Catholic Church.

The first English translation of the whole Bible was by John de Wickliffe (1324-1384). Then followed that of William Tyndale (1525) and several others. As the sum and fruit of all these appeared our present Authorized Version, or King James Version, in 1611. It was made by forty-seven learned men, in two years and nine months, with a second revision which took nine months longer. These forty-seven formed themselves into six companies, two of whom met at Westminster, two at Oxford and two at Cambridge. The present English edition is an improvement, in typographical and grammatical correctness, upon this revision, and in these respects is nearly perfect.

See Versions, Authorized

Revision Developments

A REVISED VERSION of this authorized edition was made by a group of American and English scholars, and in 1881 the Revised New Testament was published simultaneously in the United States and England. Then followed the Revised Old Testament in 1885, and the Apocrypha in 1894. The American revision committee was permitted to publish its own revision, which appeared in 1901 as the American Standard Version.

Modern-speech translations have been made from time to time between 1898-1945. Among these were Moulton's Modern Reader's Bible, the Twentieth century New Testament, Weymouth's, Moffatt's, and the American translation. As a result of the modern-speech translations that have appeared and been widely received, the American Revision Committee set to work again, and in 1946 the Revised Standard Version of the New Testament was published.

Bible Divisions and Circulation

VII. DIVISIONS INTO CHAPTERS AND VERSES.–The present division of the whole Bible into chapters was made by Cardinal Hugo de St. Gher about 1250. The present division into verses was introduced by Robert Stephens in his Greek Testament, published in 1551, in his edition of the Vulgate, in 1555. The first English Bible printed with these chapters and verses was the Geneva Bible, in 1560.

VIII. CIRCULATION OF THE BIBLE.–The first book ever printed was the Bible; and more Bibles have been printed than any other book. It has been translated, in its entirety or in part, into more than a thousand languages and dialects and various systems for the blind. The American Bible Society (founded in 1816) alone has published over 356 million volumes of Scripture.