As we finished Acts 8 last week, we came across Acts 8:37 which is either missing or bracketed in most of our English Bibles. Whether removed or bracketed, your bible will have a footnote explaining that some manuscripts don’t contain this verse. Using situations like this, some people claim that we cannot trust the New Testament because it has been copied so many times down through history that the original message has been lost. It is commonly put forth that there is no way that we can no for sure that the Bible we have in our hands today is what the Apostles actually wrote under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Sunday we are going to show that this assertion is demonstrably false. We will explain how the text of the New Testament has been transmitted to us and show some examples of how we can be assured of its accuracy. We will use Acts 8:37 as a test case and show you all the information the "scholars" use examine its history of transmission. And we will even look at a few manuscripts.

I know this kind of presentation is a different than a normal Sunday for us. We are committed to expositing the Bible verse by verse and section by section through scriptural books. That is not going to change. The preaching of the word is the central element of the church’s worship. However, as we have come across Acts 8:37, this is a good time for us to back up and also examine God’s work in preserving and transmitting His word to us. We can have assurance (from the evidence) that what we preach from every Sunday, what we read from in our devotion time with God, and what we live by as the sole infallible rule of faith and practice for the church - is God’s word accurately transmitted through time from the pen of the Holy Spirit inspired apostles!

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