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Today's talk comes from Pastor Ben Stewart.

Well, I want to ask and answer a question that gets put out there a lot in the public squares,

especially over the last few years.

And the question is this, how can you be sure that what you hold in your hand right now is what they wrote back then?

It hasn't been through so many revisions and additions and translations and changes.

How can you have any confidence that what you're reading today even remotely resembles what a guy named Jesus said 2000 years ago?

I mean, didn't Constantine change it in the 300s and then King James got a hold of it and rewrote it?

How do you have any confidence that what you hold in your hands now is what they said back then?

And the idea when people ask questions like that is that the the parcel of the Bible through history, the translation,

is kind of like the telephone game.

Do you remember that as a kid?

How did the telephone game work?

Lighting children up.

You have one in the end, say a sentence into the ear of the first kid and then they whisper it on down and what's the big punchline of the thing?

That what comes out the other end doesn't even remotely resemble and form more content.

What was originally spoken?

And the idea for many is, yeah, this book has changed so much.

It might encourage you but don't believe under any illusions that what you're reading now is what they wrote back then.

And I've seen this pushed out in the public square a lot over the last maybe 20 years.

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