Welcome back to the Word on Fire Show. I'm Brandon Vot, the host and the content director at Word on Fire joining us this time from Los Angeles.

He's normally at his Santa Barbara residence, but he's in Los Angeles right now is the great Bishop Robert Barron, Bishop Aaron.

Good to be talking with you. Hey, Brandon. Always a joy to be on with you.

What's what's the latest in Los Angeles? How are things going there? Any major natural disasters?

No, not for the moment. Thank God. You know, it's kind of a grim anniversary is coming up though soon as we record these words.

A year ago right about now was the terrible Thomas fire that was followed by the even more terrible Montecito mudslide, which was about 10 minutes from where I live.

So people have that on their minds this time of year. They're thinking about, you know, love ones lost and this great disaster. So it's one of the trials of Louis and out here in California.

There are a lot of these natural disasters.

We're recording this right before Christmas. And I know for the Christmas season, you're going to be flying back home to Chicago.

Yeah, we'll be there to kind of visit with friends and family. But we also have this bishops retreat. Tell us a little bit about that.

Yeah, it'll be at my old stomping grounds of Monday and Seminary, which is one of the few venues in the country big enough to accommodate, you know, let's say around 300 bishops.

The Pope called us to go on retreat together.

And so last I heard there's a very good sign up for this retreat. I've been teasing a lot of my brother bishops. I mean, I'm used to Chicago in January, but a lot of people aren't.

It's not going to be the most pleasant temperature. But I think it'll be a good experience. It'll be from the second to the eighth of January.

Good. Well, let's move into the subject of today's conversation, which is the most popular Bible verses. Now, I'm getting this list from a feature story and Christianity today, the big evangelical publications.

I think started by Billy Graham. But they recently had a piece titled The Top Bible Versus of 2018. Don't come from Jesus or Paul.

And the rest of the article emphasized the fact that I think the top two or three or maybe even four verses all came from Old Testament prophets, which struck me as someone unusual.

The beginning of the article says do not fear. It's a charge that extends back to the earliest parts of scripture. It gets repeated from the lips of Jesus and resonates with the modern world.

But it's also the message of the most popular Bible verse of 2018 on you version, which is the world's most popular Bible app.

They also sort of brought in stats from Bible Gateway.com, which is the most popular website for Bible verses and Bible searches. So what I thought we do during this episode is

is just reflect on and talk about some of these most cited, most shared, most highlighted Bible verses and get your thoughts on them.

So maybe let's start off with the number one verse. So this is Isaiah 4110. Do not fear. This verse was shared bookmarked and highlighted more than any other passage by hundreds of millions of you version users. What do you make of that fact?

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