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Steve Brown: What Bible translation has God given us? The answer to that and other questions on Key Life.

If you think laughter isn't spiritual, or that faithfulness to God means conformity to Christian stereotypes, then this program probably isn't for you. But if you're looking for honest biblical answers to hard questions, then welcome to Key Life. Here's our host, author and seminary professor Steve Brown, along with Pete Alinson from Forge Truth.

Steve Brown: Thank you, Matthew. Hi, Pete.

Pete: Well, how you doing?

Steve Brown: I'm doing good.

Pete: You surprised me too.

Steve Brown: I sometimes surprise myself with these teasers. Well, I was going to say something else and then I thought there are those who are sure the King James Version was dropped from heaven. And a spotlight was shown on it from heaven and said, and a voice deep like mine said, this is mine. Only use this one. And that didn't happen.

Pete: Yeah, no.

Steve Brown: So, but we'll talk about it.

Pete: We'll talk about it, yeah.

Steve Brown: That's Pete. Check out fordstruth.com. You'll be glad you did. As you know, Pete comes in on Fridays and we answer questions.

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Steve Brown: Pete, lead us in prayer and then we'll get to these questions.

Pete: You got it. Holy God, we come to you now at the end of this week, and Lord, we stop for just a minute to thank you and praise you and ask that you would speak to us.

Lord, we need you in our lives in so many ways. We need you for salvation, but you're our Father, you're our God. You lead us by your spirit every day. Lord Jesus, and God the Father, thank you for sending the spirit into our lives. So we pray that even now you would renew us and encourage us and lead us and encourage our hearts today. It's been a long week.

You know the heartache, you know the trials, you know the sins, you know where we need to repent. You know us. And so we come to you and we don't play any kind of a game with you, and we ask, lead us in the way we would go, counsel us with your eye upon us.

We thank you for Key Life, we thank you for our life, and ask that Lord, you would be with us as we gather with our churches in this coming weekend. And we pray for our pastors and priests and teachers and leaders and worship directors and servants, all that will be a big part of bringing us into your presence this weekend.

Lord, I pray that you would reveal yourself to us in a fresh way, reenergize us, give us your truth, and set us free to follow you. Now we commit this time of Q&A to you. Pray that you'd be honored and glorified in Jesus' name we pray.

Steve Brown: Amen.

Steve Brown: Pete, this is an email. Is there one Bible translation that is, quote, better, or, quote, more accurate than the others?

Pete: My favorite right now is the Syriac version of the Old Testament.

Steve Brown: I would encourage that.

Pete: And then, and then, and then Jerome in the New Testament for sure in Latin.

Steve Brown: That's right. If you're not reading that, you're not reading God's word.

Pete: You probably are not spiritual.

Steve Brown: Okay, be serious.

Pete: Okay, yeah. You know that, it's a long history of good Bible translation.

Steve Brown: They really are.

Pete: So you and I really do, probably both of us use the ESV, the English Standard Version right now.

Steve Brown: I like. But I sometimes, you, I know use the American Standard.

Pete: New American Standard, I like that.

Steve Brown: That's really accurate and they have a new translation that's good. And even the Living Bible, which is a paraphrase, carries the truth in what I think is a wonderful way.

Pete: New Living Translation is good.

Steve Brown: Yeah. NLT, New Living, yeah, that's good too.

Pete: Yeah.

Steve Brown: Almost any Bible translation that you use, if the people who did the translation are faithful, will be helpful and good to you and you probably ought to use the one with which you feel the most comfortable.

I have a friend. There is a cult that translated their own Bible. And, you know, I'm not into cult stuff, so I'm not going to give you the name, but it's a Bible that was translated by their own people. And my friend led one of their members to Christ by using that translation.

Pete: Interesting.

Steve Brown: So, God's word is God's word, and most translations are good.

So, probably American Standard if we answer this question right out is the most accurate.

Pete: Would you say? Yeah.

Pete: The NIV is English as we speak it pretty much.

Steve Brown: Yeah.

Pete: And it's good, and it's most, yeah, so it's a complex question, but get a good, well-known translation. And then if you wanted to get the New Living Translation or something like that to go along with it, it can help you.

Steve Brown: It's like a kind of commentary.

Pete: Yeah, yeah.

Steve Brown: And you can get all of that information on the internet.

Pete: That's right. But read the Bible, read the Bible.

Steve Brown: Yeah, don't, that's the most important thing.

Steve Brown: This is a question that's really interesting. I don't think we've ever gotten this. Does God give us a burden for someone that he is not chosen and is not going to save?

Pete: Fascinating. Now, we do believe in God's, you know, we are to that believe in God's, that God chooses, that God elects, that God predestines. So we believe that, so there it is. This person obviously does too. Interesting question. How, what would be your gut level quick response to something like that?

Steve Brown: Well, quickly, I would think that most of the time, the burdens that we have for particular people are spirit-led. And so we're going to be maybe not the only, but one of the people who plant seeds in that particular person. But I think we're human.

Pete: Yeah.

Steve Brown: And there's some people we love are going to be pagans until they die.

Pete: Yeah.

Steve Brown: And they like being pagans, and they want you to leave them alone.

Pete: Yeah.

Steve Brown: But God gives you, I have a friend who literally cries for her friends who aren't Christians.

Pete: Yeah.

Steve Brown: And I tell her, they're not all going to be Christians. You're going to have to deal with that. You're just going to have to deal with that.

Pete: I like that. I like that. I, you know, the great thing is that we don't know who is and who is not chosen, in the long run. We don't know. And so my friend that I pray for out in California, I've known since fifth grade, I pray for him all the time. And he shows no interest.

Steve Brown: None whatsoever.

Pete: None whatsoever. And I've had conversations with him, but I, I can't get there.

Steve Brown: You know, I, and I think, you know what you feel for your friend when he won't have anything, God feels exactly the same way. I don't think election takes place in a vacuum. I think it takes place in the context of the tears of God. And I think someday we're going to say, he's going to say, I created the best of all possible worlds where the most number of people would come to know me. And he knew who they were and created the world that way, therefore his involvement in our election.

But it's not as if God says, you don't part your hair right, I'm going to kill you and send you to hell.

Pete: That's right, that's right. This really, this question is, is fascinating, but I think it's above our paygrade ultimately.

Steve Brown: I agree.

Pete: I agree with you. So, so we, if you have a burden for somebody, pray for them and never stop and love them in Jesus' name.

Steve Brown: I agree.

Steve Brown: How can I understand and explain the Trinity?

Pete: The answer to that is simple.

Steve Brown: You can't.

Pete: Yeah.

Steve Brown: Let's go to the next one.

Pete: Yeah, right. I mean, you can't, that's right. How could I understand and explain the Trinity? God can give us a measure of understanding over time of the Trinity. But for us to intellectually say, one God in three persons.

Steve Brown: This doesn't seem right.

Pete: It doesn't.

Steve Brown: But it is one of the great reasons that our religion is true and is relational because God himself is relational, three in one.

And we've all, I do it from an existential or experiential way, just saying, I've experienced all of that. I've experienced my Father who loves me, who reminds me of my earthly father, whose love was great. Sometimes I'm led in certain directions and I experienced the spirit of God in my life. And then I look at the cross and I realize what God has done for me.

And therefore I'm an existential Trinitarian. I've experienced all of those and in a thousand different ways. It is true and it really is important.

Pete: It really is. So, read scripture and realize Genesis to Revelation, there are three persons who receive worship, who have divine names and have divine actions and you just can't get away from the Trinity from Genesis to Revelation.

Steve Brown: No, you can't.

Steve Brown: This is an email regarding treasures in heaven. What exactly are those treasures? Well, I don't know about you, but I'm going to have hair.

Pete: You have hair.

Steve Brown: It's in the wrong place.

Pete: Well, you don't have as much as you used to, but. What are our treasures? Yeah, wow.

Pete: You know, Paul consistently in his New Testament letters talks about the riches of God's grace that are going to be unpacked for us for eternity. The joy of the Lord, the the glory of Christ. There's so many, happiness.

Steve Brown: Fear is gone.

Pete: Fear is gone. No more tears.

Steve Brown: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Steve Brown: You know, Alisa Fitzpatrick, we interviewed her book on heaven, on her book on heaven and she says that heaven is the place where we get to do stuff we couldn't do and didn't have time to do when we were alive on earth.

Pete: Man. That's going to be an interesting concept to study in scripture and then look forward to.

Steve Brown: That's true.

Pete: Yeah.

Steve Brown: It's going to be good, whatever the treasures are. But I'm still going to get hair. It's been promised, okay? We got to go. Key Life is a listener supported production of Key Life Network.