Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. God to see each one of you here today as we come together and get ready to sing. Let's see, I left my bulletin down here. Got to figure out what we're singing. Glad you all are here. Welcome. We are going to sing songs about the Lord's care today. Be a good thing. And how about if we start out in him number 160. Just when I need him most. And you just keep your finger around 160 because they're all going to be right around there. Stand together. Let's say 160. Just when I need him. Jesus is here. Just when I closer just when I be ready to help me ready to cheer. Just when I need it more. Just when I need it more. Just when I need it more. Jesus is dear. Just when I need you just when I need Him Jesus is here never for save aren't you glad he is near? Just when I need him most. Let's have a word of prayer. Heavenly Father, thank you for an encouragement in the words of this song that when we need you there you never leave us nor forsake us, I promise that you gave to the apostles and as held true for believers down through the ages. Just a prayer way. And we're grateful. And we're grateful that we feel your presence here in this place. We're grateful for people who love you, who come together to study the word of God and be encouraged with your presence and the presence of one another. We thank you for your watch care that you've given us over this week and for all the blessings that are ours. We pray this in Jesus name. Amen. You may be seated, ladies and gentlemen and glad you all are here. And we welcome Weston Miles White who came into the world Saturday morning, early Saturday morning. Nathan and Whitney's son, my fifth grandchild second grandson and big sister. Halle, of course is excited. And Mimi, mimi's taking care of Halle this morning. And Mimi doesn't have a car seat so they're up on the mountain this morning. But anyway, we are excited. They're supposed to go home today. So congratulations there. Isn't that a beautiful boy? Yeah. Can't wait till he comes to church. We'll let him sing. I need somebody on the men's side. There we go. So thanks for your prayers for them and they are excited. We do have potluck lunch today. And boy do we have potluck lunch today. It is a feast back there, a veritable feast. I'm not sure what the difference between a feast and a veritable feast is, but it's a plethora of food. How's that? Lots of it. So all of you stick around and let's eat some of that up after the service today. And it'll be fun just eating fellowship back there. On Wednesday we're having soup and salad night. Frank and Jean are cooking the soups. What kind are you bringing Jean chili and chicken, cream of green chili and chicken. That sounds delicious. And vegetable beef. Excellent. So we're bringing salads and other things that go with those two soups and that'll be nice on Wednesday night, followed by what I think is the last session of the Book of Hosea. I'll tell you at 07:00 on Wednesday night whether or not it's the last session of Hosea, but we'll know. So supper at five or whenever you can get here, and Bible study at six. We'll have a good time. There. The other activities you see right there that you can check into. And let's wait and sing Happy Birthday next week because maybe Hallie will be here. But Saturday is Halle's birthday, miles's big sister, and she's going to be three years old. So happy birthday, Hallie. She's the only birthday I think we've got this week, other than Miles. And glad each one of you are here today. And Tom is back from Oklahoma ish Oklahoma cityish. That's what I meant to say. Not Oklahoma City, but in the neighborhood. North, little north. Okay. Off of the rednecks. Okay. That's our kind of folk there. Tom, we're glad you're here and working here in towns for a little bit. Glad you're here as long as you are here, Tom. Thanks. This is not right. Fern's daughter is here and why don't you we'll embarrass you and make you introduce yourself. Go for it. Soona. Yeah, yeah. We're very glad you're here and be living with Fern for a while. Right? Or Fern. Yeah, right. Soona. We're very glad that you're here and just delighted. I talked about this the other day on one of our programs about I heard this preacher, he's a big church pastor and he's got big church privilege, doesn't understand small groups. And it was this survey that said, I think 17% of churches in the survey still introduce their guests or make them stand and introduce themselves. And this big church pastor said, I am appalled that any church would ever do that. And I'm like, well, if you went to the Rotary Club and they had like 30 people there, you would introduce yourself. This is what you do in small churches. So he's got big church privilege where you would just never imagine standing up and introducing yourself. Heaven forbid. But we're a tiny church, so we introduce ourselves. Tom and suni. Suna. Suna. I'm going to get it right. I bet you do. Okay, we're glad that you all hear. Rest of us are home folk this morning. Why don't you stand and greet someone? Say hi to them. Wave to those on the camera that are with us. We're glad you're here. And now turn to him, number 162, continuing to sing about the Lord's care. Savior like a shepherd lead us. Hymn 162. We sing it together. 1161 161 in thy blessed master seat arrows by holding keep my marks in us, speak us when we go straight let the Jesus Jesus hear a windows when we pray and now just turn the page one, two oops, there we go. Turn the page just one page to 162 wonderful merciful Savior counterkeep deeper spirit long to embrace will offer sea lord, holy hopelessly lost the way you are the ones we are known here in advance of hearts always won't always wonder more might be interested in father, pray for loving your own wherein are we touching? And in the care of Jesus we rejoice now in his care turning to 164 no one ever cared for me like Jesus am. So strong and true I could tell you how we changed my life completely. My chase goes there's no other friends who come no one else would take the swimming darkness from me. More of what she cared for me. I'm a third verse. Every day he comes to me when you assure us more and more I understand his no one ever cares for me like it goes. There's a wonderful friend of one nurse. Let's pray together. Heavenly Father, we're grateful for the love and the watch care that you give for us, for Your standing beside us day by day and all the things that are ours. Sometimes in the joys and the victories, we are grateful to have you with us. And then other times, dear Heavenly Father, at times of valleys, maybe even deep depression and struggles that are ours, you're also there and a lot of people who care for us. And for this we're grateful, dear Heavenly Father, for friends and family and neighbors and church. But indeed it does come down to that truth. And no one ever cared for me like Jesus, who indeed went to the cross and died and buried and rose again. And as we approach the Eastern several weeks from now, we pray that this truth might be felt each step along the way. I ask it in Jesus name. Amen. You may be seated. And we're going to have two of our own come right back here and they are going to sing us a special that also goes on the care of Jesus today. And this will be our offer. Tory as well, and our missionaries of the Month, Rodney and Kathy Howell, and they live in Texas and they go around to events, carnivals, fairs. This week they were at the Sweetwater Rattlesnake Roundup, sharing the gospel just in case anyone got bit and died. And they do this all around the country and week after week, it's their full time ministry, is setting up a booth, witnessing the people, counseling people. It's a nice little ministry that they have. So if you give this month and market for missions, that's where it goes. If you leave it unmarked, of course it goes to the work of our church and all that we do here and around the world. We won't pass the plate, but there's a box back there. You can go either now during this special music or anytime later before you leave today or at any time. And Brenda and Lynn, thanks for leading us and thinking about the care of Jesus. He touched me shark the one I have been burdened. Now I am no longer the same. He touched me, only touched me and all the joy that's what's my soul. Something happened and now I know he touched me. I made me more. Since I meant this place the fan sequence made me lose I will never see turnbraces I should let him touched me while he touched me and all the joy just lost my soul. Something happened and now I know he touched me. That made me more. Amen. Thank you, ladies. And I got so caught up in the song I forgot to put my suit jacket on. So I'm not going to bother. There we go, we'll go. Jacket list. Today Acts chapter twelve is where we're going to look into today. And I don't know if the beginning of the sermon is the appropriate time to do it, but since we're America's greatest tiny church, we can we had guests come in after we introduced our other guests. We're glad you're here. Where are you all from? Memphis. Memphis, Tennessee. Excellent. We're glad you're here. Memphis, Tennessee. Oh, yes, we have people watching online and she's pointing to the camera. There are people up there in the balcony right there. We are glad you're here from Memphis, Tennessee. And I couldn't let that pass because here we have I wish you all were sitting right in the center here because we have the alignment here. The alignment, yes. Three perfect heads in the room right here. I wish everybody online could experience that. But anyway, for those of you online wondering why it's a little brighter in the room today, that is part of it. And then the other reason, of course, is because of my grandson born yesterday and he's so beautiful. We already talked about him, but I wanted to bring him up again because the recording edits that part out. So this part here. Welcome Miles Weston White. We're glad he's here. Congratulations to Nathan and Whitney. And now we're going to come into this new I hesitate to call it there we go. It's kind of a series, but it's a pretty loose series. How's that? I'm calling it a new look at an old story. We're approaching Easter, it's about five weeks from today, I believe, April the 9th. And as we come upon the celebration of the resurrection, there are obviously certain things that come to mind, whether it's something in society or something that's said or something around church or something on television that might spark our memory of the Easter account of the death barrel and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We come to this and I think it's appropriate that we look at some of these. And I want to really kind of look at some of the I'll say, other than when we get right up to it, we're going to look at some of the minor issues of what I'm going to call the Easter Story. Now, I know that there are some who are a little allergic to calling it Easter. I don't think it's any of you, but some don't like to call it Easter. And we're going to get into that a little bit today on why they don't like to call it Easter. But I'll cut to the chase. Because they believe that Easter is a word that comes from Babylonian paganism, the worship of Ishtar, and that that should not be brought up in relation to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And so they would prefer to call it Resurrection Sunday. I am going to say why I am comfortable with Easter. And as we come to this Easter, this sermon today, you're going to go home and say, well, that was different. It is a sermon that really relates to can you trust your Bible? Do you even hold a Bible in your hand? And can you trust it? And what do I do when over the next few weeks, perhaps, because if you're in the right circles of Christianity, both at Easter and at Christmas, you will hear those saying, oh, this is totally pagan, and if you do anything that's got pastel purple on it, you're probably pagan too. And therefore, I want to address this a little bit using a rather interesting issue. You all know that we published books here, and a number of years ago we published one by my friend Brian Ross up in Grand Rapids, Michigan that's called Don't Pass Over Easter. And it says, A new defense of Easter in Acts chapter twelve, verse four. I'm just giving you a sermon. He wrote a book if you want, if you want if you want to dig deeper. I happen to know the salesman, but anyway, I'll pull my material from some of his and some of what we've looked at. But let's go to Acts chapter Twelve, and we'll read in just a moment, or we'll be there in just a moment to take a look at what we've got. But we need some artwork up here for the sermon. So here we go. The descent from the cross. This really has nothing to do with my sermon at all, but it was kind of an Easter ish, right. It was done by Peter. Paul Rubens is the actual original artist. The wood engraver is a guy named G Prisbury. All he ever put on his stuff was G Prisbury. And the truth is, we have no idea other than we know what period about 1840s, that G Presbury did his work. And outside of that, we don't know who G Pressbury was. We know he was in England and he did wood engravings. And so here is his wood engraving of Peter paul Rubens, who is 1005 hundreds, I believe, work on the descent of Christ from the cross. As we think about the resurrection. We'll put that as a background. But how many of you believe that it is important that you have a Bible? I thought so. Good. I want to talk about that a little bit because we are going to investigate one word in one translation of a Bible and we're going to do that to determine can we really trust the Bible? Do we even have a Bible? Because there are a lot of people who will say, well, even if you start talking about, let's say, the inerrancy of Scripture, inerrancy, I think you can probably figure it out. It means it doesn't have errors in it. And if you start talking about the inerrancy of the Scripture, especially some of the seminarians, they'll take a step back from that saying, well, you know, it's only the original manuscripts that were inerrant and we don't have those. And what they're kind of trying to say is the one you've got is riddled with error. It's got all sorts of changes that were made over the years. You don't really even know what the Bible says. So even though you're holding that book that says Holy Bible, that's not really a Bible. You don't have the Bible unless it actually has Paul's fingerprint on it, then that's a real Bible. Well, we're going to look into that today and try to figure this out. I do think that evangelicalism really kind of Christianity as a whole, but certainly evangelicalism needs to get a grip on this issue of the Bible. And what is the Bible? What constitutes the Bible? We'll dig into this here in just a moment. But it is my fear that evangelicals of course, you know that a number of years ago. I won't pull the book, but I'm sure I've got some in the pulpit, a little book that I wrote, why I'm a Fundamentalist and You Should be too. I didn't really grow up a fundamentalist and yet I now call myself a fundamentalist. And that is because I don't have near enough jelly in me to be an evangelical. I've looked at it and said, evangelicalism doesn't even know what it is anymore. It's like trying to nail jelly to a wall. You know, what is that thing? It's all, it's this, it's that, it's everything. And and I think that evangelicalism has taken too loose of a view of Scripture. I think that in doing so, they really don't have a solid foundation. They don't have anything to stand on anymore. And that's why they've gone every which way but loose. There's an old song written about that if you want to look it up. And they need a foundation. And so calling ourselves fundamentalists and coming into that, we say, okay, at least we can stand on the word of God. Now, let me ask you we'll take a little quiz. Do you believe the Bible to be the Word of God? Yes. Okay. Do you believe that God spoke in his word? Let me say that different. Do you believe that God spoke in words and that His Word is made up of his words? How's that? To confuse is the word of God. The words of God, as you go through that, is to say, if you want to feel sophisticated, call it verbal plenary inspiration. Do you believe in verbal plenary inspiration? Plenary means the whole thing. Like, if you got a plenary session at a conference, everybody comes together in one room. Verbal means words. So verbal plenary is every word. Every word. Verbal plenary, inspiration. I believe every word is inspired. So that's the idea that I believe that this is the Word of God, and then when I open it up, I have the words of God, and I take the words of God interpreted, grammatically, historically, literally, in their context. I take that, and I have, as a whole, the word of God. So you've got a yes and a yes there. Do you believe that one word is as adequate as another word? Is one word as adequate as another word? I got a bunch of nose here. It's not as adequate as another word, but it does remind me, just the other day, I was watching The Beverly Hillbillies maybe the first one. I don't know. It was really early on. Even Granny was young. And have you, sir, from Memphis ever watched the Beverly Hillbillies? Never, dad. You've got some training to do there. Okay. So Jed Jeb I knew that was right. Yeah. Here's a story about a man named Jeb. Okay, clamp it. You're right. Jeb was talking to who's? The banker that moved with him to Hollywood. Drysdale. Yes, Ms. Drysdale. And she was convinced that he had been tok, you know, because the land man had come out, you know, and and she was convinced he had been to and he said, yeah, yeah, he's paid me 25 or 30. He said she's had 25 or 30. Anyway, she was convinced, and she said, then it came down to well, he said, this is a new kind of new kind of dollars he was paying me. And she said, New kind of dollars? There is no new kind of dollars. I said, he he told me, he says you've been took. He said, Well, I've heard of $20, and I've heard of $100, but I never heard of millions dollars. He's paying me in millions dollars. And that's when her jaw dropped. What does that have to do with this sermon? Oh, words. Yeah. $25 is a lot different than $25 million. Right. Words. The one word is not necessarily adequate for another. Now, we understand that in the human language, sometimes there are let me think back to language class. There are synonyms, right? And this word kind of means that word, and probably today, if we were talking, one person might be having supper and another person might be having dinner and we'd be okay with it. But we wouldn't be okay if I said, hey, I'll tell you what, we got lunch today, definitely as lunch. But maybe it's dinner, I don't know. Sunday dinner, let's go to tomorrow. Monday is different. Tomorrow at 06:00, you want to get together for breakfast? If I say that, what time are you going to meet me? 06:00. A.m., because that's the only time you have breakfast. But I'm thinking about dinner or supper 06:00 p.m.. Now, you see, breakfast and supper aren't the same thing. Dinner and supper, yeah, okay, maybe we'll get the context, we'll figure that out. But breakfast and supper, they're two different things. So the point is that we really do need to be my favorite word persnickety about words. Words really do matter. And that's a little bit of the sermon today is that we need to have this scrutiny into the word of God and the words of God to figure out what is going. Now, that involves knowing some English. English is a good help if you're reading the Bible in English, right, and doing a little research on some English every now and then. A dictionary is a nice thing to have. It often involves at least doing a little bit of basic work into either Greek or Hebrew. If you're not sure why that English word is there, let's go back to the Greek and Hebrew, see how they use that. And you don't have to take a Greek or Hebrew class really to do that. You just need like a strong concordance or some basic tools that are pretty readily available out there and you begin to take a look at those and you can begin to come together. So let's I tell you what, even before we get to Acts, chapter twelve, if you're in Acts, go ahead and turn to the right a little bit to Romans chapter 14, verse 23. And I want to show you in Romans 1423 an example that shows that we, and I use that in a pretty broad sense of Christianity really do need to come down and figure out, okay, what constitutes a Bible. If we're people of the book, which book are we people of? What is that book? Because words can be a very different thing. You notice in Romans 1423, we're not going to take the context or xge doubt what it's what it's talking about there or what it means. But just the first part of 1423, it says this and he that doubteth is damned. If he eat he that doubteth is damned. We're just going to go with that right there. But on your on your bulletin outline there, I have put a couple things that was, of course, King James. I was reading from he that doubteth is Damned, New American Standard, which I used for 25 or 30 years often say I've got Nasby stained fingers. And sometimes I find out I have a Nazi stained brain because I will quote a scripture that I learned all those years ago and I quote it over and over and over again. And then someone comes and says, you know, that's not what mine says. And I find out, okay, that's my nasb stained brain there. But it says, he that doubts is condemned. Okay, dammed condemned. Maybe dinner and supper. I don't know. One certainly stronger than the other. Today's English version says, if they have doubts, God condemns them. Now, that sort of changed the grammar a little bit from active verb to a passive verb or changed the subject. God is the one that it added in. God condemns them. And maybe it was implied in the others, but the word wasn't actually there. And I'm a little bit allergic to people translators that I don't know, which is all of them coming in and doing the assuming for me. I assume this is God that condemns them and therefore but I don't know. I could read the context. I'm not going to, but I could read the context. And what if I find out that it's just the local Baptist church? Damning you condemning you. Maybe God's not involved in this. And so I want to be the one who does it myself. As sometimes I say I'm a big fan of the King James Bible. Now I say it's time to put your big boy pants on and use the King James. That's the one that's going to let you do the homework and work on it. So that changes it. The NCB. That's the new century version. It says this, those who act without being sure it is right are wrong. Well, that seems to be a lot different than he who doubt of is damned. And to me, I'd like to know which it is. Okay, sometimes I act without being sure if it's right, and sometimes I'm wrong and sometimes I'm right. But that's kind of in a different that's $25 versus $25 million, right? We need to work this one out. Then there is the message which says, you're out of line, you're out of line. Wouldn't you agree that being damned and being out of line are really not even kind of in the same universe? That's a totally different thing there. So what I think is that we need to come and figure out what is a Bible. Here, I got a new picture for you. I brought a portrait of King James. There it is, in case you were wondering. By the way, he's King James the 6th and King James the first. Did you know that? King James the 6th of Scotland. King James the first of England. That's the way that works. We normally call him King James the first. This painting was done in 16 five when he was alive and well, as you can see there, in case you wanted to know what the King looked like. He was an interesting fellow, had a very long range in 50 some odd years at the time. It was the longest we know. Now it's not the longest. I think he's third in line. Now, I may be wrong on that. And he is, he is accused of all things bad and he's accused of all things good. And if you ever just think, you know, you wake up one morning thinking, I would like to study King from 400, 500 years ago. He'd be a good one. Do a research paper on him sometime, okay? King James the first. He'd learn lots of stuff. He actually wrote a book on. He wrote quite a few books. I bet you didn't know he was a writer. And he sort of fostered literature during his time. That was the time of Shakespeare and a whole bunch of other guys that were in that era that you all know. So I won't say their names, but it was like the height of literature in England. Everybody was gathering around the theater and the book and learning and words, and he really kind of fostered that. And he did a lot of writing himself. And he wrote a book on his view of monarchy. It was a religious book. What he thought under God the King was my guess is we probably would disagree with him on a few things, being Americans as we are, but nonetheless, interesting guy here. So he came about in 1611 and did the translation that we have today called the King James Version. So we look at those various translations there and we have to say, well, they're not all the same thing. And that means one of them at least, or some of them have got to be wrong. And that means that some of them are not the Bible because the Bible is without error, right? And we don't take a view that says, close enough, close enough. I sort of have a Bible. I'd like to have a Bible. I want to know what that is. Now with that as the background, I want to go to Acts chapter twelve, verse four. And we're going to look again at this one word in Acts chapter twelve and verse four, and can't go to that picture yet. We're going to keep the King up there for a while. Let's read verses one through four just to get a little bit of context and Bible study here in Acts chapter four, verse I got that backwards. Acts chapter twelve. Verse four is where we should be, acts, chapter twelve. And let's read verses one through four. Says now about that time, Herod the King, you heard of him, right? Not this one, you haven't heard of this one. It's a different herod. The king. This is the grandson of Herod the King. Herod the Great is the one you're thinking of. When you hear Herod slaughter the babies and whatnot the builder, the architect, that's Herod the Great. He died a long time ago, probably. This says 42 Ad. So he probably died 43 years. He's been dead 43 years. Now his grandson is on the throne. So it's the grandson. Now, about that time, Harry the King stretched forth his hands to vex certain of the Church. In case you're not sure what all those words mean, it's not a good thing if you're in the church. OK? The Church at that time was totally Jewish. Herod, of course, was King of the Jews. He was King of the Jews, though he served the Romans, but he was set over the Judean empire and King of the Jews and was a Jew himself of sorts. I don't know that he ever would have got Rabbi of the Year award, but he knew Jewish things, being King of the Jews and observed Judaism as King of the Jews. But he didn't like this new thing that was going on in here, what is called the Church. And the Church at that time was all Jews. And the Church at that time was Jews that believed that Jesus was their Messiah, like Peter and James. We're going to read about James here. Well, he began to vex persecute. I'll show you how, how much he persecuted in verse two. And he killed James, the brother of John, with the sword. If you need a little bit of Bible trivia, if you're ever on Jeopardy or anything. And the category is apostles and the question is or the answer is James, then the question is he died 1st. 1st martyr we got is James. And this is the James of Peter, James and John that we see so often. So he killed James, the brother of John, with the sword, verse three. And because he saw it pleased the Jews. Now, remember that the Jews had come together and rejected Jesus. They said, Give us Barabbas, crucified Jesus. And they still were of that same mindset. Again, this is about 42 Ad for nine years now, there was this group of people that said, no, Jesus was the Messiah. We should have chose Jesus, not Barabbas. And it caused quite the conflict. It was in all the papers. So it pleased the Jews. So you know how politicians are sometimes. If the people are happy with it, let's keep on doing it. And the Roman government, under which Herod of course, was a servant, the Roman government really did work on, we normally call it bread and circus. You know, give them food and entertain them. We can get away with whatever we want. I know our society is not like that, but that society. Give them bread and entertainment, hey, they'll let us do anything. And so part of keeping the people happy was killing the right people along the way, getting rid of them. Oh, you know, everybody rose up and said, Herod, he's a jolly good fellow. So they, they, they, he killed James. They liked it. Verse three, in the middle of verse three, it said he proceeded further to take Peter also, we know Peter, don't we? Okay. So now he's going for the guy who really is the public faith of the Church. He's just going to get rid of this thing. We wore a cap. It said, Maja, make Judea, make Judea great again. And he was going to get rid of Peter. So then a parenthetical phrase. End of verse three. Then were the days of unleavened bread. The days of unleavened bread. You may remember your Jewish feast. That the days of unleavened bread. And we could look this up. I'm going to have you trust me on it because I don't want to be late for lunch, but we could look it up and find the days of unleavened bread were shorthand for about a week, maybe even a little bit more of Jewish feasts. It started with Passover, and immediately after Passover, unleavened bread began the feast of unleavened bread, which is a seven day feast. And on the Sunday of that, after Passover, it was the feast of first fruits. And on the Monday, the counting of the omer began as they began to count their way towards Pentecost. So it was a big holiday time. And just kind of like we might say, the holidays are approaching and we mean Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Year's and Kwanza is what we mean, right? Hanukkah? We'll put that in there. We just mean kind of that collection of things right there. Well, that's how days of unleavened bread were given. Okay? These were the days of unleavened bread. Now, verse four, when he had apprehended him, that is when Herod had apprehended Peter and put him in prison and delivered him to four Quaternians of soldiers. If you want to look that up, that's 16. He got 16 soldiers. There four corners of soldiers to keep him. And then notice what it says. Intending after what? Easter? Intending after Easter to bring him forth to the people. The days of the unleavened bread. And after Easter he wants to bring him forth to the people. Now there are those that laugh at the King for in his book, putting the Christian Holiday of Easter in the Days of King Herod, because, well, Easter is kind of a Christian holiday and neither the Church, even as it's defined in Acts Twelve, nor society, nobody was doing Easter yet. Okay? So put wrong word, wrong word. If you Google it, you'll find Acts Twelve four, they did the wrong word, they got a mistake, they shouldn't have put Easter. That was an anachronism, which means taking something from another time and putting it in this time. And they might even mock it, saying and the scripture goes on to talk about how Herod then put his Hebrew. What's the hot dog? Hebrew. Hebrew. National hot dog in the microwave and enjoyed his lunch. Okay? They didn't have Hebrew National hot dogs and they didn't have microwaves, you know, so that kind of mock how this is wrong. Let's look at it at three lines of reasoning. The first line of reasoning or thinking is that the King James Bible is wrong and it used an anachronism. That's probably mostly what you're going to find if you're just out there and you look it up. Acts Twelve four. The King James Bible is wrong. And if it's wrong in that word, by the way, and our premise is right, and our premise was that the word of God is made up of the words of God and that all words do not mean the same, then that really means are you even holding a Bible in your hand? You must not be because there was no such thing as Easter. And so it's mocked just a little bit and carried out. And I think sadly it is mostly in intellectual and academic circles that like to use this and say what anachronism, how wrong they are. And that sounds kind of right. Yeah, of course they didn't have Easter then. So, okay, maybe used it kind of referring to that time, but it wasn't Easter and this is accurate. And when you're persnickety about words, they should have used the word Easter. Here's one Dr. James R. White. No relation. And I don't really care for James R. White for a number of reasons I disagree with this theology, but he wrote a book called The King James Only Controversy. He said one might include the KJV's usual rendering of Acts Twelve Four as more of a mistranslation than an ambiguous reading. And it could be hard to argue against that assertion given the facts. Luke's reference to the days of unleavened bread make it clear that he is referring to the Jewish holiday season, not to some pagan festival that did not become known by the specific term Easter for some time to come. Okay, he mentions it there. Now the view, of course, says there was no thing that was Easter. He meant passover. And in the English language, to use Easter as a substitute for Passover, that's just an unforgivable mistake. Now today, you and I, for example, if we went across the street to Chabad, the Jewish house over there and we asked the rabbi, a rabbi wins Easter, he would probably say across the street, this is not my domain, we don't do Easter. You're in the wrong place. Now, if you want to know when Passover is, I can talk to you. Because just like breakfast is not supper, easter is not Passover. Right? That's where we are. So we would look at that and say, okay, yeah, they really shouldn't have used Easter there. That's the wrong word. But is it? I don't want you to jump to conclusions. This is how it's so easy to be swayed in an argument, because that all sounds pretty logical. Easter is not passover. And if God said Passover and King James said Easter, the king got it wrong and God got it right, and therefore this book I've got is wrong. I wonder where else it's wrong. And then it becomes kind of a slippery slope from there. Well, then there's a second line of thinking, and that is that the King James Bible is right, but that it wasn't talking about Easter as we know it, it was talking about Easter as the pagan holiday. The ishtar the Babylonian kind of stuff. And this line of reasoning goes that in the days of King Herod, the Babylonians were there and even around Jerusalem and Cesaria, where they happened to be here, and that it was a big holiday time. Not only do you have Passover unleavened bread of the Jews, but you've also got all the pagans and they're doing ishtar, and so everybody's got some holiday going, and so it put both of them in there referring to the pagan holiday. Now that builds upon the idea that ishtar and ishtar worship, is the origins of Easter. Dr. Samuel C. Gipp wrote a book called The Answer Book. Samuel Gipp, by the way, is a strong pro King James advocate. So he says it's not wrong, it's just not referring to what you think of. He says, if Herod was referring to Passover, the translation of Pascal as Easter is incorrect. If he was indeed referring to the pagan holiday, Easter, then the King James Bible 1611 must truly be the very word and words of God. And it's the only Bible in print today that has the correct meaning. That is to say that no other Bible gives you an idea that it's after the pagan holiday that he was waiting for. And that's true in the Nazi, in the living Bible in the new century, whatever esv you pick up, whatever, they all translate Easter in Acts Twelve Four as Passover, it was the days of unleavened bread and after Passover was over. So Samuel Gibbs says, no, it's in the days of the unleavened bread and after the pagan holiday was over. So only the King James gets it right. Okay, so what have you got here? The King James is a Bible or the King James is not a Bible. The King James has a mistake. It doesn't have a mistake. Which is it? Is your head spinning yet? No. Okay. The line of thinking here then, promotes Easter as pagan. And I would suspect that this Easter time, if you say to someone, Happy Easter, and they say, Resurrection Day excuse me, I didn't hear you say Easter. I would suspect that they come from a very strong King James, maybe King James only background, and that their belief is that Easter is the pagan holiday. And we don't celebrate the pagan holiday, and therefore don't call it Easter. I struggled with this for a while, by the way, because I do like to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and I kind of want that to be upfront there. But I also found in a general society, it's kind of awkward to say, hey, our Resurrection Day services are going to be at 10:00 A.m., and half the people go away saying, meet me at the back door. What day is Easter and when time are we meeting? I said Resurrection Day, so it doesn't really compute. We call it Easter, right? That's what we call it, and we get that. So is Easter a pagan holiday? And should you not even use the word? Now, we could argue on another day whether or not you should have colored eggs or bunnies or any of that kind of stuff. We'll save that argument for over lunch. Wherever you want to discuss it, we'll put that in. But should we even use the word Easter? Some strong King James only advocates say, no, don't even use the word Easter unless you're referring to the pagan holiday. Now, there is a third line of thinking. Here we are, ladies and gentlemen. Let me give you a hint. The preacher always gives his view last. And here it is, this third line of thinking. I don't think that Easter, the word Easter came from ishtar. I think the whole connection of Easter and ishtar is totally bogus. I think that Easter has always been a Jewish or a Christian celebration, depending on which side of that you were on. And it was always in the spring of the year and typically always at the first full moon after the harvest in the month of Nissan. And going through it calculated when that was, by the way. Later on, I think it was Gregory, Pope Gregory in the Gregorian calendar who set Easter at a certain time. So now Easter and Passover are not always the same time, but would say, okay, that's the time that it was that Easter is actually Resurrection Sunday, and they're the same thing. And that the King James translators, when they were coming along and came to the particular word. And the Greek word, by the way, is the word Pasca. Pasca. Does anyone speak Spanish? Or Italian? Or French? German. German doesn't work. German and English are the exception. All of the Latin based languages take the word Pasca, which is the Greek word here, translated Easter, and they just borrow that word into their language to mean Easter. So in Spanish, the word for Easter is pasqua. And you can hear it in Italian and French and all those other languages. It's some version of the Greek word Pasca, which came into Latin, which came into all the Latin languages. You got pasqua. English and German did a different thing. And it's because English borrowed from the Germans. The Germans took the word Western. It's like Eastern with an O on the beginning. Maybe I'm pronouncing it wrong, erston, ersten, German, with apologies to the German speakers in the audience, but they always seem so mean. Every time I fly on Lufthansa airline, I'm like, I'm buckling my seatbelt and sitting, putting my seat belt, because there's, oh my God, I just wanted Diet Coke. Anyway, we borrowed from that and we made Easter. But it was the word that meant, depending on the context, either the Jewish celebration of Passover or the Christian celebration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And it didn't have anything ever to do with the pagan holiday. So the King James translators, when they come in, what they are doing is taking the word that was used in that time, Easter, and they put it in here. Now there are other times they chose to use the word Passover, but in 1611, Easter, Passover, both of these words were used interchangeably, as a matter of fact. You ever heard of William Tyndale? William Tyndale was, I think the first wasn't even get my Bible history right. I believe William Tyndale was the first to translate the Bible into the English language. William Tyndale did all the Old Testament. Excuse me. Now, he did the New Testament first, maybe I don't know what you did. He did the New Testament first, and he realized I need a better word than Easter. I need to separate what we do in the celebration of the resurrection from what Jews do at the Passover. And that brings me to my next picture, which is a Passover table set up right there. Acts twelve four is the Passover. No doubt about it as the Passover. So why did they call it Easter if it's the Passover? Because in 1611, the word Easter was the word that was Passover. As a matter of fact, William Tyndale, to get back to my story, william Tyndale made up the word Passover. There was no word in the English language, Passover. He said, I need a word that describes the Jewish thing, Passover. I'll make up this word. He coined the word, introduced it to the English language, Passover. It'd be interesting, by the way, to know how much of the English language was influenced by the English translations of the Bible along the way. What other words did we coin? I bet there's a number of them that we brought up, but he just said, okay, I'm going to make this word Passover. Now, let me give you an example. I prefer not to use the terms Old Testament and New Testament. I prefer to call them the Hebrew scriptures and the Greek scriptures. One was written in Hebrew, one was written in Greek. And that to me helps a little bit of confusion that I think come along on. When did the New Testament start or when does it start or whatever. And furthermore, doesn't denigrate the Old Testament. We're in the Old Testament. I'd rather be in the New. I like new things, so I prefer to call it the Hebrew scriptures and the Greek scriptures. But you know what I've learned if you're in a hurry? Old Testament. Because almost every time if I say Hebrew scriptures, I almost feel the need, whether I need to or not, I feel the need to define what do you mean by the Hebrew scriptures? What are you talking about? Is that the Torah or what are you talking about some other book? Are you talking about the Quran? I don't know. What is that? So the Hebrew scriptures. The Greek scriptures. So I have found a lot of times it's easier just to say Old Testament. Well, just like it'll take a few years for me to train the world to quit calling it the Old Testament. And the New Testament. They've been doing so since Jerome's day in 325 Ad. Closer to 400, actually. So for quite a few years they've been calling it Old Testament. It's going to take me six or eight years to train the whole world not to do this. Let's call it Hebrew Scriptures. In the meantime, I'm probably going to have to go back and use both of them, right? In 1611, this is where they were. They they called it passover. They called passover Easter. They called Easter Easter, and they'd never called Easter Passover. But they did call Passover Easter. And as a matter of fact, if you look at the German translation that Martin Luther did, every time Martin Luther talked about Passover, he used the word person, the word that we got Easter from, he always called it Easter. Why? Because he didn't coin a word to come up with the other thing to make the other thing. So my whole point there being that people want to come and say, I don't even think you hold a Bible. Is it? This Bible? Is it that Bible? This has got that word, this one has another one. So the best we can do is kind of come up with a conglomeration and hope we sort of got the Bible right. I think we can put that aside and I think that we can say there is a Bible that is built upon what I think is the right text and that really meticulously it has used the right words. And therefore we have an English Bible in the King James version. That's why I went back or went to the King James. Really? I never was a King James user until I became a big boy and I went to the King James and I began to use it because I realized they've got such an accuracy. Now sometimes we have to go back and see how has language changed in the, in the 400 years since then and make sure we understand that. But I am not even an advocate to say, therefore we ought to update it and have like King James 2.0 that doesn't use Easter, because everybody understands Easter. It's the Christian holiday. And it's obviously passed over here. I don't think we ought to do it. The reason I don't think we need to update is because I think it is better to train ourselves and our children that when it comes to the word of God, look up all of them, study all of them, do a lot of research on all of them, go back and see what it meant back there. Because as soon as we change it, guess what's going to happen? The English language is going to change the meaning of another word, and then we're going to have to have 3.0, and then it'll be 4.0. And eventually you get away from the meaning. Whereas if you and I were just trained to say, hey, let's be persnickety with words, this one doesn't seem right. Here Easter. Why did they choose this word here? You got about 60 translators who honestly were the best linguists that probably ever met under one roof in the history of mankind. Why did they use that word? Would they really make such a mistake? What were they thinking? And then you go back and you do a little research and you begin to figure it out. And not only does that confirm, oh, okay, Easter was perfectly fine in their day and age, everybody knew Easter was Passover. That's it. And that also keeps you from running on this wild goose chase of saying, oh, I can't say Easter because that's pagan and I want to stay away from it. By the way, can I add one more thing? And I'll quit. Those who are a little allergic to saying Easter typically come from a King James background, and those are typically not word of faith people. But that's a little word of faith. If you can't say a word because the vibrations are going to cause God's heart to shake and then he's going to throw lightning down on you. That's word of faith stuff. And I'm not really into word of faith stuff. I'm into reality, spiritual reality and physical reality. And there it is. That was cold as a stainless steel sink, wasn't it? But hopefully give us, as we come into this Easter time, give us a little bit of grounding to say. Now that I know, here's some words I'm going to trust, words I'm going to verify, words I'm going to look into, words, I'm going to figure out what words mean that'll open up so many doors of understanding to what happened at the days of unleavened bread during Passover and all of those other things, and we can figure it out. And we'll be looking at some of those things in well, there as we look a new look at the old story, let me lead us in a word of prayer. Heavenly Father, thank you for the Word of God, the strength that it gives us, so many things we could go on to. Heavenly Father, how the word has shaped society, how it has shaped our hearts and our lives, how it has been proven to be true over and over and over again, and how we should not be lightly dismissive of even what we've got in in this English translation done so many hundred years ago. Dear Heavenly Father, it just seems that every time we said they were wrong, it turns out we were. So thank you for the fact that we can hold a Bible in our hand, and we rejoice in this in Jesus name. Amen. Well, aren't you glad that the Bible does share the gospel of Jesus Christ? And let us know that he is offering a gift this Easter season and all others through his son Jesus Christ. And that's what we celebrate today. Amen. And we have lunch, and we have lots of lunch, and some of the ladies are back there getting it all set up, and I think we ought to go eat it. Amen. Wednesday night, we got to come and eat soup and salads and bread. You're bringing bread, too? You're bringing two soups and bread? We're bringing everything to go with it. Okay, excellent. And lots of food. Y'all come join us back there, and let's do it. Thanks for those who joined us online as well. Food right there. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.