Daily Bible Reading Podcast

Hey, happy New Year to you all! If you happen to be one who started the DBRP at the beginning of 2021, you have surely noticed that our readings have contained one prophetic figure of speech or metaphor after another that all say that, “In the end, Jesus, the Son of God and Lion of Judah WINS. Blessed are you if you faithfully endure as a believer and follower of Him. The times that we are living through will be increasingly tough. Stand firm in holy living and in doing good works that glorify God. You will not be disappointed in the results!” In 2022 my prayer is that we believers become better ambassadors of the basic beliefs taught in the Bible. How can we help our friends, family, or casual acquaintances to see the errors in the pagan worldview that is being promoted in the media today? I recommend the videos, podcasts, and books by Greg Koukl. His organization is called Stands to Reason, and his website is str.org. In particular, I recommend his book called Tactics. Be sure to get the 10th Anniversary Edition, which is available also as a Kindle book/audio book. The great thing that Koukl teaches is how to use questions in discussions with people holding different views, so that your conversations don’t turn into arguments. (All the links for things I mention today are found in the episode notes.) At this time every year I give suggestions for other audio Bible podcasts, so that after listening to me for a year, you can listen to another voice. The great granddaddy of daily Bible reading podcasts is the Daily Audio Bible. Another good one is the Daily Radio Bible. As you choose a reading program for next year, I urge you to remember the basics that I give in my How to Study the Bible video, https://youtu.be/sPyAp8ZxDBE. Be sure to pick a plan that will have you reading some of the NT every day, not zipping through the NT starting in September or October. Some of you who listened to the NLT podcasts this year may want to listen to my GNT podcast series next year. If so, the site is dailyGNTBiblereading.info. If you want to use the YouVersion Bible app for your daily Bible readings, my 365-day plan is called ‘Digging Deeper Daily’. You can search in the YouVersion plans for Digging Deeper Daily, or find the direct link in the episode notes. Digging Deeper Daily: https://www.bible.com/reading-plans/1314-digging-deeper-daily If you would like to listen to David Suche reading the NIV Bible (as I did in 2020), I suggest that you follow the YouVersion plan named ‘Read to Me Daily’. If you select the NIV UK edition as your Bible, then David Suche is the reader. You can search in the YouVersion plans for ‘Read to me daily’. Read to Me Daily: https://www.bible.com/reading-plans/13707-read-to-me-daily This 365-day reading plan is presented in four semesters. For information about other apps you can use for Bible reading or listening to the Daily Bible Reading podcasts, please see the Read This First pages that are linked in the top bar of the dailybiblereading.info site. If the app you are using does not show you the episode notes with clickable links and paragraph formatting, there are many other apps that will do a better job of that. For people following the Daily Bible Reading podcasts in 2022, I will not be starting a new Facebook group or sending our special emails next year. But if any of you will be starting groups on some social media platform for a small group following the Digging Deeper Reading plan, I would like to offer my help and encouragement. If your group has questions that I might answer from a Bible translator’s viewpoint, you can invite me to join your group. I won’t have time to be active in multiple groups, but I would be glad to answer questions and encourage your group. I will continue sending out news or informational podcasts at random times, like this one. Finally, I want to remind you that these 4-5 days are the peak times when people make resolutions to read the Bible. Please share with your friends about the Digging Deeper Daily reading plan and the DBRPs. Please give them the link: dailybiblereading.info. Gale and I wish you a joyous year in 2022. May the Lord bless you ‘real good’!

Hi friend, I’m so glad you’re listening to this update. I will share a very useful tip today. Before I tell you about that, I want to ask for your help: Are you one who made a New-Year’s resolution last year to read the whole Bible? Well, how did that go for you? Would you be willing to share a word of testimony from your year reading the Bible to encourage others? If so, please use your voice memo app on your cell phone to record your message. You might share a verse that meant a lot to you this year, or share some way God used his Word in your life. I will post your comments at the dailybiblereading.info website. I will tell you how to make and send your audio file to me at the end of this episode. If you are one of those who made that decision a year ago and have kept up your reading since January 1, you know that we are now in the big Prophecy binge-reading time at the end of the year, reading minor prophets, Isaiah, and Revelation. The possibility of seeing correspondences between your three daily readings goes up to about 95%. Some people find the prophetic genre difficult. Recently I had a conversation with one of our church’s elders. He had undertaken to do a thorough study through the book of Jeremiah, and found it very difficult. More than that, he complained about his frustration in understanding the book of Revelation. I want to offer a little help in this area that I re-discovered recently. Here’s the tip I mentioned: Dr. Bob Utley’s Free Bible Commentary (http://www.freebiblecommentary.org/) Note the word Free! What you get in Utley’s commentary is expert information that is gleaned from a lifetime of research. Dr. Utley has dedicated himself to making a high-quality commentary on every book in the Bible. His work is scholarly, yet written so that it is easy to understand. So, in view of our current prophecy-reading binge, I would like to share some thoughts on the prophetic genre, which is also called the Apocalyptic genre. Many of us recently read the book of Daniel. You may recall that chapter 11 is filled with incredible details prophesied to Daniel by an awesome angelic messenger. I am not going to go into any of the details now. What I will do is to give you some introductory material from Bob Utley’s commentary on Daniel 11. I will summarizing some general points about the prophetic genre that Bob Utley quoted from D. Brent Sandy’s book Plowshares and Pruning Hooks: Rethinking the Language of Biblical Prophecy and Apocalyptic. From Daniel 2, "What Makes Prophecy Problematic?" "the question is whether emotional language is necessarily exact language," p. 41 "hyperboles, in effect, stretch the truth in order to increase the impact of the words," p. 41 "a prophet's intent may be to express emotion more than exactness," p. 41 "at what level are readers supposed to understand the prophetic visions—every detail? The overall picture?" p. 48 From Daniel 3, "How Does the Language of Prophecy Work?" "if we fail to grasp the inherent metaphorical nature of language, we fail to understand prophecy," p. 59 From Daniel 5, "How Does the Language of Apocalyptic Work?" Are the details in the vision allusive and symbolic or precise and explicit? Generally, the images lack precision," p. 117 "anticipating the details of political events of the fourth through the second centuries raises the issue whether the point of the vision is the details or the overall impact," p. 119 "but we must not begin with the specific lest we fail to grasp the global!" p. 122 "it is also expected with the nature of apocalyptic language that some details may simply be for effect; stated another way, some details may be make-believe," p. 124 "details may have no particular significance other than to give the account more emotive power," p. 126 "there is a certain amount of futility; therefore, in trying to determine the significance of all the details of apocalyptic visions," p. 126 "to read the Apocalypse with a microscope, even striving to decipher the significance of the most minute detail, defrauds the genre of it intended function," p. 127 "understanding the orality of the Apocalypse underscores the point that correct interpretation pays more attention to the overall impression of the visions than to the individual details," p. 127 "from the vision in Daniel 8 we learn that while apocalyptic may seem on the surface to describe the future in detail, in point of fact, it does not. Some details may in the end match up with a precise event, but it would have been impossible to see that in advance," p. 128   From Daniel 6, "How Have Prophecies Been Fulfilled?" "the already fulfilled prophecies demonstrate a pattern of translucence rather than transparency. The intent was apparently not to give specific information about the future," p. 146 "figures of speech abound in the poetry of prophecy. That should suggest that correct understanding of prophetic poetry is often not possible until after the fulfillment," p. 150 "if we grasp the intent of prophecy as primarily prosecution and persuasion, we will not expect it to reveal details of the future," p. 154   Daniel 7, "How Will Prophecies Be Fulfilled?" "because prophecy is poetic, it is inherently ambiguous and in some ways less precise," p. 158 "given the nature of prophecy, we should probably deduce that it offers panorama, not close-up details," p. 163 "prophecy and apocalyptic: it is a stained-glass window, not a crystal ball," p. 184 "the function of the prophets' language was to draw attention to basic ideas about the future, not to reveal precisely what will happen and when it will happen," p. 184   Conclusion "the fundamental question is, does the language of prophecy intend to give us details from which we can preconstruct how the future will unfold?" p. 206 "biblical prophecies were generally not understood before they were fulfilled," p. 199 This perspective has helped me as I struggled with Dan. 9:24-27. It is less helpful with chapter 11 because there are so many corroborated historical details from Dan. 11:2 to 11:35. Daniel 11:36-45 parallel Dan. 7:7-8,11,24-25 and 9:24-27. These seem to fit into Jesus' words in Matthew 24; Mark 13; Luke 21; Paul's words in 1 and 2 Thessalonians; and John's words in the Revelation. However, as the NT authors saw fulfilled OT prophecy only after Jesus' life, these end-time events are not all literal, historical predictions. Only time will tell. But for those last generation of hurting and dying believers, many (but not all) of them may be very literal to encourage them to faith and hope (which is the purpose of all apocalyptic literature). It was actually my Bible translation team in Indonesia who re-introduced me to the Free Bible Commentary series. They described the commentaries like this: “Utley doesn’t promote only his own interpretation of a passage. Instead he equips the reader with all the information needed to weigh the strengths and weaknesses of differing opinions, giving you the tools needed to make good interpretive decisions.” My wife, Gale, has been leading two groups of women at our church every week in studying Isaiah 40-66. It used to be that I would find post-it notes on the dining room table with questions for me to answer. Ever since I showed her Bob Utley’s commentary, I seldom find post-it notes on the breakfast table. Now, to let Bob Utley help us with the book of Revelation, I would like to read a couple of paragraphs from his Introduction to that book: Most of my adult academic/theological life I have had the presupposition that those who believe the Bible take it "literally" (and that is surely true for historical narrative). However, it has become more and more obvious to me that to take prophecy, poetry, parables, and apocalyptic literature literally is to miss the point of the inspired text. The author's intent, not literalness, is the key to a proper understanding of the Bible. To make the Bible say more [than the original writer intended] (doctrinal specificity) is as dangerous and misleading as to interpret it in such a way as to make it say less than was intended by the original, inspired writer. The focus must be the larger context, the historical setting, and the intention the author expressed in the text itself and in his choice of genre. Genre is a literary contract between the author and the reader. To miss this clue is surely to lead to misinterpretation! The book of Revelation is surely true, but not historical narrative, not meant to be taken literally. The genre itself is screaming this point to us if we will only hear it. This does not mean that it is not inspired, or not true; it is just figurative, cryptic, symbolic, metaphorical, and imaginative. The first century Jews and Christians were familiar with this type of literature, but we are not! The Christian symbolism in The Lord of the Rings or the Chronicles of Narnia might possibly be modern parallels. … These apocalyptic works were never presented orally; they were always written. They are highly structured, literary works. The structure is crucial to a proper interpretation. A major part of the planned structure of the book of Revelation is seven literary units, which parallel each other to some extent (e.g., the seven seals, seven trumpets, and seven bowls). With each cycle the judgment increases: seals, 1/4 destruction; trumpets, 1/3 destruction; bowls, total destruction. Within each literary unit the Second Coming of Christ or some eschatological event occurs: (1) sixth seal, Rev. 6:12-17; (2) seventh trumpet, Rev. 11:15-18; an end-time angel judgment in Rev. 14:14-20; (3) seventh bowl, Rev. 16:17-21 and again in Rev. 19:11-21 and still again in Rev. 22:6-16 (also note the three-fold title for God in Rev. 1:4,8 and Christ in Rev. 1:17,18, "who is, who was, and who is to come," notice the future aspect is left out in Rev. 11:17 and Rev. 16:5 which means the future has come [i.e. second coming]). This shows

I hope that it will be interesting to you to share 14 verses that rang a bell for me this year. In collecting these verses, until recently I didn’t plan on sharing these with you. Rather, this is more like letting you see verses I wanted to use to preach to myself. Stay tuned at the end. I would like YOU to share your favorites with me! Random:GW'20 Proverbs 29:2 2 When righteous people increase, the people ⌞of God⌟ rejoice, but when a wicked person rules, everybody groans. I’ve heard many groans this year. Remember, by the way, that when the nations of Israel and Judah sinned, one way that the Lord repeatedly punished them was by giving them bad kings.   GW'20 2 Chronicles 26:16 16 But when he became powerful, his pride destroyed him. … My thought here is that some things have gone well in my life and ministry this year. But I pray that I can avoid pride, because it is such a trap and so dangerous. How King Uzziah must have regretted going into the temple to burn his own incense during all the remaining years of his life, excluded from visiting the temple, living in a separate house, and receiving reports of how his son was ruling in his place!   PCF Ecclesiastes 10:1 1 One dead fly can make a whole bottle of perfume stink. Even so, a little foolishness can outweigh great wisdom and honor. I am at the place in my life where I want to finish well. I want to leave behind a good smell (so to speak) when people remember me. The word ‘foolishness’ in Proverbs refers to bone-headed refusal to obey God. The last thing I want to do is to mess up at the finish line. A little stupidity at the end can leave a stench that obliterates a God-honoring testimony.   GW'20 Proverbs 14:14 14 A heart that turns ⌞from God⌟ becomes bored with its own ways, but a good person is satisfied with God’s ways. When I struggle with impure thoughts, it helps me to think that if I gave myself up to follow the cravings of my lower nature, my joy in that kind of a lifestyle would last about 10 minutes. Boredom would come so quickly, and eventually I am sure I would repent. But the resulting wound of remorse in my heart would never totally heal.   Faith: PCF/GW Proverbs 23:17-18 17 Do not envy sinners in your heart. Instead, continue to fear the LORD.18 There is indeed a future for you, and your hope will not be crushed.   I picked this verse to use in preaching to myself. I don’t often envy sinners, but just the good fortunes of others. A powerful thing to remember when tempted to envy or lust is that I have a really fantastic future promised by God. The hoped for outcomes there are safe, in that place where moths and rust don’t ruin things. Don’t look back. Keep looking forward! The next verse tells us what we are gazing at.   PCF/NLT 1 Peter 1:8-9 8 You love him,even though you have never seen Him.And even though you do not see Him,you believe in Himand celebrate with glorious joythat goes beyond anything words can say, 9 since you are receiving the proper goal of your faith,namely, the rescue of your lives.   Love Him. Don’t forget your rescue, and the privilege you have in knowing Jesus through all of God’s Word. Keep hold of joy! PCF/GW Matthew 12:39 39A He responded, “The people of an evil and unfaithful era demand miraculous signs. …   There is a reason why the Lord gives miracles sparingly. Miracles may help give someone's belief an initial nudge, but miracles never grow mature faith. People who seek to go from one miracle to another (if the Lord permits that to happen) continue to need to be spoon-fed. Most of the heroes of faith in chapter 11 of Hebrews did not receive what they trusted God for. They developed a faith that could stand any test Planning: NET Luke 14:28 28 Which of you, wanting to build a tower, doesn’t sit down first and compute the cost? …   This verse is leading up to Jesus’ teaching about counting the cost of being his disciple. However, let me make a tangential point: Some people have gotten the idea that Christians shouldn’t plan anything, but just be led by God without planning. I believe that this is totally false. A parent doesn’t want to always have to tell his child to take a bath or to go to bed. God wants his children launched into this world prayerfully making their plans and moving ahead to complete them.   GW'20 Proverbs 16:3 3 Entrust your efforts to the LORD, and your plans will succeed.   Read that several times. So I ask you: What will happen if you don’t make any plans? It’s a good idea to pray! NET/PCF Matthew 7:11 11 If you then, though you are so sinful, know how to give good gifts to your children, just think how much more your Father in heaven will give good gifts to those who ask him!   So I ask again: What will happen if you don’t ask God for good gifts? (And by ‘gifts’ I mean the answer to prayers about plans you have made for glorifying God in your life.)   This is like  NET Matthew 7:7 7 “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened for you. I’ll pause in order for you to answer out loud. So what happens if you don’t knock, don’t seek, and don’t ask?!   ESV Hebrews 11:6 6 And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.   This is the foundation for receiving what you ask God for in prayer.   GW'20 Matthew 6:6 6 Whenever you pray, go to your room and close the door. Pray privately to your Father who is with you. Your Father sees what you do in private. He will reward you.   After those other verses, I might as well follow the same pattern and ask: What will happen if you DON’T go into your private place and pray?  There is a big promise there that I don’t want to fail to cash in on! Consider: We are going before the Almighty King of the Universe. Through Christ Jesus, we have the wonderful privilege to be able to appear before God the Father and make our requests. I take this verse literally and urge you to do so also. That is, actually go into a private room, actually close the door. Realizing that you are entering the throne room of God, do what people did throughout the pages of the Bible: Humble yourself and be reverent! Get down at least on your knees (if you are physically able to do this) or even bow down lower. Pray. Then rejoice in that promise.   ESV/PCF Psalms 145:18 18 The LORD is near to all who cry out to Him, to all who cry out sincerely.   The ESV says, ‘to all who cry out in truth.’ To me this means that we will not be just going through the motions, saying the right words, but not really meaning them. This is why I translate ‘in truth’ as ‘sincerely’. Sincere prayer is also believing prayer, like James 1 tells us.  I wrap up all that I have shared with this verse, Eccl 12:11. The ‘wise advisor’ in this verse is Solomon, and definitely not me. However we can extend the idea to the Lord being the wisest advisor. The translation of this verse is my translation of how this verse comes out in the Plain Indonesian Translation.   PET Eccl. 12:11 The teaching of a wise advisor is like a shepherd’s stickthat is used to guide and direct his sheep.May every saying given by this advisor and shepherd be nailed into the mind of every learner and guide them in living rightly. Please pray for my visa to Indonesia to be granted, so that I can go there on November 2. If it is granted, I will need to quarantine for eight days in a hotel before being released to live like I normally do in Jakarta. Exciting things are happening there with the use of the Plain Indonesian New Testament.   Sometime before the end of the year I want to publish a podcast with YOU reading your favorite verse from this year. Here’s what to do: Use a voice recording app on your phone to record your favorite verse. Then say something about why that verse spoke to you. Try to limit your explanation to 3-5 sentences. I recommend going into an echo-free room, like maybe your clothes closet, and hold the phone away from where it will catch explosions of air when you say some words. Send the audio file to me at phil.fields@pbti.org.   May the Lord bless you ‘real good’. Phil

I have been back from Indonesia for over a month now, and my life has slowly calmed down to the point where I can make a podcast again. If you listened to my last update, sent from my hotel room in Jakarta, and prayed for me, I want to say Thank You! The Lord answers prayers! If you would like to see a follow-up to my prayer requests from my last update, a link to our recent prayer letter is here in the episode notes. LINK Heads up, people: I have some cool downloads for this episode. You can see all the links to those in the episode notes. In my last update, I mentioned that I would share something about my article in Indonesian which started out with the title, The Heritage of the King James Version. After John Wycliffe, the first famous English Bible translator, I learned a bit more about William Tyndale. He fled for his life, and finally was betrayed and cruelly martyred in 1536. But his work greatly influenced Bible translations after him. One estimate says that 84% of the KJV shows influence from Tyndale. Beyond that, through subsequent translations, Tyndale’s influence is still felt. Bringing this home to the present day, if you read the ESV, Tyndale’s influence is discernible in that Bible. How amazing and I think this shows God’s fingerprints: The first Bible translator martyred is still influencing our Bible translations. Before the KJV, there were two English translations of note: The first is the Great Bible, authorized by Henry the VIII. This was translated by Miles Coverdale. It was called ‘great’ because of its size. King Henry's Secretary of State, Thomas Cromwell, directed the clergy to provide “one book of the Bible of the largest volume in English, and the same set up in some convenient place within the said church that ye have care of, whereas your parishioners may most commodiously resort to the same and read it.” Note that this means that Cromwell and the king did not consider that parishioners might want their own copy! Coming only three years after Tyndale’s incomplete translation, Coverdale primarily revised and corrected Tyndale’s work. Coverdale translated the remaining books of the OT from the Latin Vulgate, not from the Hebrew. The second precursor to the KJV that I want to mention is the Geneva Bible. It was published in 1560, 51 years before the KJV. Under the reign of Mary Queen of Scotts, when protestants were persecuted and more than 300 were martyred, many protestant theologians fled to various places in Europe. In particular, many fled to Geneva, where John Calvin was in the later years of his life. In 1557 they formed a committee to translate the Bible. Just a year later, Queen Elizabeth I gained the throne of England, and the dedication of the Geneva Bible was addressed to her. The Geneva Bible scored an amazing number of FIRSTS: It was the first English Bible translation that was translated entirely from the original languages, Hebrew and Greek. It was the first Bible translated by a committee instead of by a lone individual. The Geneva Bible was the first to be printed in an easy to read Roman font. The Geneva Bible was the first study Bible, with Bible maps, and explanatory notes on every page. Note also that these notes were written by leading scholars of the Reformation. This was the first printed Bible with chapter and verse numbers. The Geneva Bible was the first one to use italic font for words that were added to complete English grammar, differentiating those words from all those that were direct translations of the source text. This Bible was printed in versions that were small enough to be easily carried and inexpensive enough that ordinary believers could own a copy. The Geneva Bible (and not the KJV) is the Bible that was used by William Shakespeare, Oliver Cromwell, John Knox, John Donne, and John Bunyan (the writer of The Pilgrim’s Progress, 1678). This is the Bible that in 1620 was carried to America on the Mayflower. Twenty-four copies of this Bible are housed in libraries and museums in America. If you are interested in the Puritans and what the protestant reformers believed, get the Geneva Bible. Facsimile copies of the Geneva Bible are available to buy, one of the 1560 edition, and the second of the 1591 edition. I have already given away my facsimile of the 1560 edition. However I have found a complete PDF that contains the complete 1560 edition, and the link for downloading it is here in the episode notes. (This PDF is only 259 MB because it is a black and white scan.) If you don’t want to learn to read the antique font in the PDF, Biblegateway displays the Geneva Bible complete with its footnotes. However, when King James came to the throne of England, he did not like the Geneva Bible. One of the issues was those excellent study notes I mentioned above. You see, some of the notes contain critical remarks about what ‘kings or queens shouldn’t do’. (This is no wonder, seeing what the authors had been through!) James decreed that the new translation would not have any study notes.  It is an odd quirk of history, that the KJV has so dominated in its influence, because in its time it was  not considered the most exact translation, not considered poetic in its style, not considered as the only authoritative Bible. But it became the dominant Bible in England and eventually in the USA partly because its printing was authorized by the Crown, thereby suppressing the printing of the Geneva Bible. However, beyond doubt, the King James Bible has been, and still is, the world's most influential book. I will not take the time here to list its many influences over our English language and culture (as such praises can be found all over the Internet), but I highlight one influence not normally mentioned: The KJV has exerted a huge influence over Bible translations into the world’s languages. Most of the time, Bible readers of this time do not realize that what is sold as a King James Version they use is not really the same as the original KJV. That is why a better name for the modern editions of the KJV is the Authorized Version. You can download a PDF of the whole KJV 1611 first edition here. (The whole Bible is 1.8 GB because this scan is in color.) [naked link: https://archive.org/details/1611TheAuthorizedKingJamesBible/page/n5/mode/2up] One of the differences between the normal Authorized Version and the real 1611 KJV is that the Authorized Version won’t contain the Preface entitled The Translators to the Reader. If you think that you’re good at understanding King James English, I challenge you to read the original Preface. To make it easier to download, I have linked a copy of just the preface HERE. When you discover how difficult it is to read the original font and spelling, I have linked a PDF that contains the KJV Preface with modern spelling HERE. Unfortunately, what we need is a modern language translation of this important document, with footnotes explaining references to events, literary figures, or customs common to that era that leave modern readers in the dark. Back in the 1980s, I wrote a letter to a special friend and supporter because he and his family had joined the King James Only movement. My short article with quotes from the Preface was later reprinted and used by Wycliffe Bible Translators. The letter is linked HERE, and it explains why the King James translators themselves would not have agreed with the King James Only movement. There is so much more to discuss about the history of Bible translation up to our times, which will someday be in the article I was writing in Indonesian. For now I want to jump to a notable Bible translator who is now largely forgotten. His name is Richard Francis Weymouth (1822-1902). Weymouth was a school teacher, an authority on literature, a published linguist, and a published Greek scholar. His NT in Modern Speech was published posthumously by his secretary in 1903. Weymouth was WAY ahead of his time. He realized that all the English translations published up to 1900 retained the wooden literalisms of Tyndale, making them hard to understand. He set out to make the first ever natural-sounding English translation, that is a translation that would make it sound like Paul and other NT writers had written in English, instead of Greek.  So Weymouth made the first ‘meaning based translation’, although that term and terms like ‘dynamic equivalence’ had not yet been coined. His NT in Modern Speech is wonderfully accurate and still sounds amazingly modern, given that it was first published in 1903. It was not until 1966 that the Good News Translation appeared. The Weymouth NT was published in two forms, one with footnotes, one without. If you are going to read this NT, be sure to get a copy with the footnotes. It is not hard to find used copies. You can download a copy here for free (9.7 MB), complete with the footnotes. (It is available in the MyBible app, but without the footnotes.) A prettier copy, evidently in higher resolution is found here (48.2 MB). Recordings of ten books of the Weymouth NT are read quite dramatically and available for free download through LibreVox. Now turning to news about the NLT side of the Daily Bible Reading Podcast: Tyndale House Foundation changed their years-old copyright policies, so that they now have a policy for podcasts. I am thrilled that they have granted permission for my NLT Daily Bible Readings to still be made available. As per their request, the complete copyright notice has been placed at the end of the episode notes for every podcast. I will read it here: Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations in these podcasts are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved. I will be slowly adding brief audio summaries of the notice to every podcast. I give a shout out to my volunteer secretary, Vicky P

Hello! I’m sending this update to you from Jakarta, where I am in my third day of five in quarantine after arriving here. This audio update is for any of you listeners to the Daily Bible Reading Podcast who would like to hear about my work as a Bible translator. This is not one of the Reader Take Note series where I discuss various topics in God’s Word.  For those of you who are new DBRP listeners who don’t know much about our ministry as Bible translators in Indonesia, here is the back story: Gale and I came to Indonesia as aspiring Bible translators in 1983. After learning the Indonesian language for 6 months, in mid-1984, we chose to work among the Orya language group. That project lasted for 21 years. The Orya New Testament was dedicated in 2005. But even before completing that project, I was convinced that Indonesia’s national language needed a better Bible translation. So in that same year, 2005, we started what eventually was named the Plain Indonesian Translation. In order to publish a Bible translation for Indonesia’s national language, I found it necessary to start a non-profit Bible translation organization. The OurLanguage Bible Organization (which I will refer to as Albata) was started in 2012. Then in 2014, the Plain Indonesian Translation NT was published in its first edition. Skipping to the present: It is not fun to have to wade through the list of requirements to do international travel these days. One bright spot, however, was that this time the planes were quite empty. All the passengers had extra room on the 12 ½ hour flight from Dallas to Narita (Japan), and the 7 hour flight from Narita coming here. Once on the ground in Jakarta, all the passengers were herded through 8 different checking stations. Normally it would take me around half an hour to get through the immigration check and pick up my luggage. This time it took 2 ½ hours. At the end of the line, in a process supervised by the police, all foreigners coming into the country have to quarantine in a hotel for 5 days at their own expense. During the 5 days I will get two PCR Covid tests. At least, as one fellow passenger observed, the good thing in all this is that Indonesia’s government is trying their best to limit new strains of the Covid virus from entering the country. So here I am on the 16th floor of a 4-star hotel, all alone, getting 3 very good meals per day, and finding it hard to stay awake and even harder to force myself to exercise in my room. In November of last year, I started working with four members of our translation team here to revise our Plain Indonesian New Testament. I finished my main part in that revision process just before starting this trip. I am looking forward to what God will do through his Word in this new edition and ask for your prayers. For the first time ever, in this third edition, the New Testament will be published using high quality Bible paper and with a more durable cover. Instead of looking like a fat paperback book, this time the New Testament will look like a sacred book should look. I am certain that readers will enjoy our more concise and more precise translation with added footnotes. Much enthusiasm for the Plain Indonesian Translation has come through a partnering group called the Good Seed Network, which is challenging people to read the whole NT in 90 days. People have been participating from all over Indonesia. We will be giving away thousands of New Testaments this year to people who are in this program. About a month ago, Balazi, the director of our organization here in Indonesia, brought it to my attention that many Indonesians use the KJV as their final authority when confused by Indonesian Bible translations. Two things have bothered me about that: Indonesian students of the Bible need better tools to be able to discover what the Hebrew and Greek source texts actually say. The source language of the Bible is not the English of the KJV. And secondly, students of the Bible in Indonesia need better information about how we got our Bible, including information about how the original language texts were preserved for us and what happened in the history of Bible translations, including the far-reaching influence of the KJV. So I started writing a short history of Bible translation which is now about 80% finished. I have enjoyed discovering so many things I never knew about all this, and I hope to share them with you in one or two Reader Take Note series podcasts, sometime after I get back home (at the end of June). If you have listened to this so far, I ask you to pray for my time in Indonesia. Here are three prayer requests: In four to eight years our Bible translation organization here (Albata) will be able to publish the Plain Indonesian Bible with a complete Old Testament. I hope to live to see that day. But our six team members here are looking farther into the future and asking, “After that, what will we do?” We will be having meetings starting next week to discuss that topic. The answer to that question will tell Albata’s leaders what they need to do in the next few years to prepare for the future. My main concern now is to set operating principles and establish an organizational culture that will help Albata continue as a ministry that the Lord will be pleased to use in the future. Please pray that the Lord will give us his wisdom. One of our partner organizations is called Faith Comes By Hearing. They do many of the audio Bible recordings all over the world. They have given us 100 audio Bible players (called Proclaimers) that are for the Orya people. I look forward to being among the Orya people when we start distributing those in June. Now FCBH have promised to give us 400 more Proclaimer units which we will give to people who are unable to read or those who have vision problems. I hope to be present when we distribute a few of those during my trip. The solar powered Proclaimer units are expensive, and we never would be able to afford so many of them. We are so grateful for FCBH’s support! Please give thanks to the Lord for the gift of the 500 Proclaimer units, and pray that the Lord will lead us to those who need and will cherish these. Please pray for me in many divine appointments, that I can be the Lord’s representative, speaking with the help of the Holy Spirit.   In family news, our daughter, Hannah, with Brandon and three kids will soon be leaving Jakarta. Brandon has accepted a job directing a ministry to refugees in Greenville, SC. I will only get to eat dinner with them a couple of times before they leave. Gale will travel from Arkansas to Greenville to see them shortly after they arrive there. Then Gale will drive a rented car from there to visit her Mom in Georgia. Her Mom has been under hospice care for over 6 months now. She is so ready to be in the presence of her Savior.   Thank you for praying for us, and we pray for you that the Lord will bless you ‘real good’.   Phil

Greetings and welcome to this bonus edition of the Reader: Take Note series, which I am releasing at day number 85. This is an occasional series aimed at providing extra commentary and encouragement for those following the Digging Deeper Daily reading plan. No matter where you are in the reading calendar, I hope that the things I share in this episode will support the idea that God’s Word has many treasures for us, and it always pays to dig deeper. My mistake from the last podcast was that I gave an incorrect author name for the book I recommended. The book is entitled How People Grow. One author is Dr. Henry Cloud. The second is Dr. John Townsend, not Towns. Glenn Lewis gets the prize so far this year for a mistake found in day number 70. I said while summarizing Numbers 3 that The 12,000 Levites were the substitute for Israel’s 12,273 first-born sons. Now the podcast has been corrected to say this: The 22,000 Levites became substitutes for Israel's 22,273 first-born sons. So the difference was between 12,000 and 22,000. Hey, I was only off by 10,000! If you have questions, comments, or find a mistake for me to correct, my favorite way for you to send messages to me is via the contact button at dailybiblereading.info. I’m always interested to hear your thoughts. For this episode I am not going to be talking about any of the passages we have read recently. If we were going by episode numbers, I should label this bonus episode as for Day 314 or 315, because the topic today is Daniel chapter 2. After my introduction of the topic, I will play the audio from my pastor’s sermon on that chapter from March the 7th, 2021. I think it is timely to share Dr. Tad Thompson’s sermon with you, as I consider this message so important for the time we are living in. Now, I am thankful for the timelessness of the Bible, so that things that I commented on as early as 2014 in the NLT series podcasts are still relevant. But back then, I had no idea of the huge changes that would take place in our culture, that we have come to see so clearly in the last few months. Tad’s sermon will give some contemporary perspective that I think will be helpful to all of you who listen to my podcasts. His sermon notes are included in the episode notes. The site where you can see recent sermon videos or listen to the audio is linked here in the episode notes: https://www.covenantsiloam.com/sermons Let me read all of Daniel 2 to you now from the God’s Word translation. Dan 2:1-6: 1 During the second year of Nebuchadnezzar’os reign, he had some dreams. He was troubled, but he stayed asleep. 2 The king sent for the magicians, psychics, sorcerers, and astrologers so that they could tell him what he had dreamed. So they came to the king. 3 The king said to them, “I had a dream, and I’m troubled by it. I want to know what the dream was.” 4 The astrologers spoke to the king in Aramaic, “Your Majesty, may you live forever! Tell us the dream, and we’ll interpret it for you.” 5 The king answered the astrologers, “I meant what I said! If you don’t tell me the dream and its meaning, you will be torn limb from limb, and your houses will be turned into piles of rubble. 6 But if you tell me the dream and its meaning, I will give you gifts, awards, and high honors. Now tell me the dream and its meaning.” Dan 2:7-18: 7 Once more they said, “Your Majesty, tell us the dream, and we’ll tell you its meaning.” 8 The king replied, “I’m sure you’re trying to buy some time because you know that I meant what I said. 9 If you don’t tell me the dream, you’ll all receive the same punishment. You have agreed among yourselves to make up a phony explanation to give me, hoping that things will change. So tell me the dream. Then I’ll know that you can explain its meaning to me.” 10 The astrologers answered the king, “No one on earth can tell the king what he asks. No other king, no matter how great and powerful, has ever asked such a thing of any magician, psychic, or astrologer. 11 What you ask is difficult, Your Majesty. No one can tell what you dreamed except the gods, and they don’t live with humans.” 12 This made the king so angry and furious that he gave an order to destroy all the wise advisers in Babylon. 13 So a decree was issued that the wise advisers were to be killed, and some men were sent to find Daniel and his friends and kill them. 14 While Arioch, the captain of the royal guard, was leaving to kill the wise advisers in Babylon, Daniel spoke to him using shrewd judgment. 15 He asked Arioch, the royal official, “Why is the king’s decree so harsh?” So Arioch explained everything to Daniel. 16 Daniel went and asked the king to give him some time so that he could explain the dream’s meaning. 17 Then Daniel went home and told his friends Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah about this matter. 18 He told them to ask the God of heaven to be merciful and to explain this secret to them so that they would not be destroyed with the rest of the wise advisers in Babylon. Dan 2:19-30: 19 The secret was revealed to Daniel in a vision during the night. So Daniel praised the God of heaven. 20 He said, “Praise God’s name from everlasting to everlasting because he is wise and powerful. 21 He changes times and periods of history. He removes kings and establishes them. He gives wisdom to those who are wise and knowledge to those who have insight. 22 He reveals deeply hidden things. He knows what is in the dark, and light lives with him. 23 God of my ancestors, I thank and praise you. You gave me wisdom and power. You told me the answer to our question. You told us what the king wants to know.” 24 Then Daniel went to Arioch, whom the king had appointed to destroy Babylon’s wise advisers. Daniel told him, “Don’t destroy Babylon’s wise advisers. Take me to the king, and I’ll explain the dream’s meaning to him.” 25 Arioch immediately took Daniel to the king. He told the king, “I’ve found one of the captives from Judah who can explain the dream’s meaning to you, Your Majesty.” 26 The king asked Daniel (who had been renamed Belteshazzar), “Can you tell me the dream I had and its meaning?” 27 Daniel answered the king, “No wise adviser, psychic, magician, or fortuneteller can tell the king this secret. 28 But there is a God in heaven who reveals secrets. He will tell King Nebuchadnezzar what is going to happen in the days to come. This is your dream, the vision you had while you were asleep: 29 Your Majesty, while you were lying in bed, thoughts about what would happen in the future came to you. The one who reveals secrets told you what is going to happen. 30 This secret wasn’t revealed to me because I’m wiser than anyone else. It was revealed so that you could be told the meaning and so that you would know your innermost thoughts. Dan 2:31-49: 31 “Your Majesty, you had a vision. You saw a large statue. This statue was very bright. It stood in front of you, and it looked terrifying. 32 The head of this statue was made of fine gold. Its chest and arms were made of silver. Its stomach and hips were made of bronze. 33 Its legs were made of iron. Its feet were made partly of iron and partly of clay. 34 While you were watching, a stone was cut out, but not by humans. It struck the statue’s iron-and-clay feet and smashed them. 35 Then all at once, the iron, clay, bronze, silver, and gold were smashed. They became like husks on a threshing floor  in summer. The wind carried them away, and not a trace of them could be found. But the stone that struck the statue became a large mountain which filled the whole world. 36 This is the dream. Now we’ll tell you its meaning. 37 “Your Majesty, you are the greatest king. The God of heaven has given you a kingdom. He has given you power, strength, and honor. 38 He has given you control over people, wild animals, and birds, wherever they live. He has made you ruler of them all. You are the head of gold. 39 Another kingdom, inferior to yours, will rise to power after you. Then there will be a third kingdom, a kingdom of bronze, that will rule the whole world. 40 There will also be a fourth kingdom. It will be as strong as iron. (Iron smashes and shatters everything.) As iron crushes things, this fourth kingdom will smash and crush all the other kingdoms. 41 You also saw the feet and toes. They were partly potters’ clay and partly iron. This means that there will be a divided kingdom which has some of the firmness of iron. As you saw, iron was mixed with clay. 42 The toes were partly iron and partly clay. Part of the kingdom will be strong, and part will be brittle. 43 As you saw, iron was mixed with clay. So the two parts of the kingdom will mix by intermarrying, but they will not hold together any more than iron can mix with clay. 44 “At the time of those kings, the God of heaven will establish a kingdom that will never be destroyed. No other people will be permitted to rule it. It will smash all the other kingdoms and put an end to them. But it will be established forever. 45 This is the stone that you saw cut out from a mountain, but not by humans. It smashed the iron, bronze, clay, silver, and gold. The great God has told you what will happen in the future, Your Majesty. The dream is true, and you can trust that this is its meaning.” 46 King Nebuchadnezzar immediately bowed down on the ground in front of Daniel. He ordered that gifts and offerings be given to Daniel. 47 The king said to Daniel, “Your God is truly the greatest of gods, the Lord over kings. He can reveal secrets because you were able to reveal this secret.” 48 Then the king promoted Daniel and gave him many wonderful gifts. Nebuchadnezzar made Daniel governor of the whole province of Babylon and head of all Babylon’s wise advisers. 49 With the king’s permission, Daniel appointed Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego to govern the province of Babylon. But Daniel stayed at the king’s court. Tad’s sermon highlights what he calls a sandwich structure found in Daniel chapter 2. He wisely didn’t use the technical

Greetings and welcome to this third edition of the Reader: Take Note series. This is an occasional series of podcasts aimed at providing extra commentary and encouragement for those following the Digging Deeper Daily reading plan. No matter where you are in the reading calendar, I hope that the things I share in this episode will support the idea that God’s Word has many treasures for us, and it always pays to dig deeper. In this episode I will discuss * my mistake in the last Take Note podcast, * things modern readers may miss in the story of the 10 plagues in Egypt, * why the descriptions of the construction of the Tabernacle are so hard to visualize, * which order were the synoptic Gospels written in? * and two verses that are difficult to translate in Luke. Did you catch my mistake in the last Take Note podcast? I said that John the Baptist’s father (Zechariah) quoted from Malakai 4, about ‘NLT'07 Malachi 4:6: 6 His preaching will turn the hearts of fathers to their children, and the hearts of children to their fathers. … Zechariah actually said, GW'20 Luke 1:76:76 “You, child, will be called a prophet of the Most High. You will go ahead of the Lord to prepare his way. His words are reminiscent of Malachi 3-4. But the one who actually quoted Malakai 4:6 was the angel Gabriel, who (speaking to Mary about Jesus) said, GW'20 Luke 1:17:17 He will go ahead of the Lord with the spirit and power that Elijah had. He will change parents’ attitudes toward their children. He will change disobedient people so that they will accept the wisdom of those who have God’s approval. In this way he will prepare the people for their Lord.” If you have questions or comments, or corrections to what I have said, my favorite way for you to send messages to me is via the contact button at dailybiblereading.info. I’m always interested to hear your thoughts. Let’s open to Exodus 3— if you happen to have a Bible handy and are not listening to this while driving. When we were checking our translation of Exodus with a consultant (Norm Mundhenk by name), he showed us several things I had never noticed. In the story of the burning bush: NLT'07 Exodus 3:2-4:2 There the angel of the LORD appeared to him in a blazing fire from the middle of a bush. Moses stared in amazement. Though the bush was engulfed in flames, it didn’t burn up. 3 “This is amazing,” Moses said to himself. “Why isn’t that bush burning up? I must go see it.” 4 When the LORD saw Moses coming to take a closer look, God called to him from the middle of the bush, “Moses! Moses!” “Here I am!” Moses replied. So who is in the bush, the angel or God? The interesting observation here is that Moses seems not to like having the Lord do things that are physical or visible, such as making a bush be on fire. In this story, the angel messenger never speaks, but GW'20 Exodus 3:5-6:5 God said, “Don’t come any closer! Take off your sandals because this place where you are standing is holy ground. 6 I am the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” Moses hid his face because he was afraid to look at God. Another example is found in chapter 14: NLT'07 Exodus 14:19-20:19 Then the angel of God, who had been leading the people of Israel, moved to the rear of the camp. The pillar of cloud also moved from the front and stood behind them. 20 The cloud settled between the Egyptian and Israelite camps. As darkness fell, the cloud turned to fire, lighting up the night. But the Egyptians and Israelites did not approach each other all night. The angel of the Lord made the very visible pillar of cloud and fire, but just a few verses later: NLT'07 Exodus 14:23-25:23 Then the Egyptians— all of Pharaoh’s horses, chariots, and charioteers— chased them into the middle of the sea. 24 But just before dawn the LORD looked down on the Egyptian army from the pillar of fire and cloud, and he threw their forces into total confusion. 25 He twisted their chariot wheels, making their chariots difficult to drive. “Let’s get out of here— away from these Israelites!” the Egyptians shouted. “The LORD is fighting for them against Egypt!” There are Bibles that capitalize the word for Angel in these cases where God is so closely connected with some physical manifestation. In Genesis the same thing happens. When angels appear, they most often speak God’s words directly using the first person for God. Now the word in both Hebrew and Greek that we translate as ‘angel’ means messenger. In later OT books (and especially Daniel) angels are indeed just that, messengers, and sometimes even with names, who speak about the Lord in the third person. Now let’s look at the 10 plagues that God wreaked upon Egypt. Our consultant, Norm, had us compare the similarities and differences in * location, at the river, or more likely at the palace? * Whose staff was used, Moses’ or Aaron’s? Or did God say to lift up their hands, or did Moses just pray? * the magicians’ reaction, or the reaction of Pharaoh’s officials * Pharaoh's reaction, in particular, Did Pharaoh harden his own heart, or did God do that? If you do the analysis, you will notice patterns and a crescendo building toward the 10th plague. Then there is something I only recently learned from a different source: I perhaps heard in a sermon, but never remember looking into the claim that each of the 10 plagues showed that God is more powerful than Egypt’s gods. Rather than repeating information penned by others, let me suggest that you search on the Internet for ‘ten plagues of Egypt’ and choose the article by GotQuestions.org, or find the link here in the episode notes: https://www.gotquestions.org/ten-plagues-Egypt.html This site also has a beautifully done video with the same information as their excellent article. I find the 9th plague particularly interesting: “The ninth plague, darkness, was aimed at the sun god, Re, who was symbolized by Pharaoh himself. For three days, the land of Egypt was smothered with an unearthly darkness, but the homes of the Israelites had light.” “The tenth and last plague, the death of the firstborn males, was a judgment on Isis, the protector of children.” Remember that Pharaoh’ own son and heir to his throne died on that night. (Ex. 11:5) Next, have you ever had trouble visualizing the sacred tent or tabernacle? I certainly have! Let’s concentrate on chapter 26:1-6.  Exo 26:1-6: "“Moreover, you shall make the tabernacle with ten curtains of fine twined linen and blue and purple and scarlet yarns; you shall make them with cherubim skillfully worked into them. The length of each curtain shall be twenty-eight cubits, and the breadth of each curtain four cubits; all the curtains shall be the same size. Five curtains shall be coupled to one another, and the other five curtains shall be coupled to one another. And you shall make loops of blue on the edge of the outermost curtain in the first set. Likewise you shall make loops on the edge of the outermost curtain in the second set. Fifty loops you shall make on the one curtain, and fifty loops you shall make on the edge of the curtain that is in the second set; the loops shall be opposite one another. And you shall make fifty clasps of gold, and couple the curtains one to the other with the clasps, so that the tabernacle may be a single whole." One of the problems is that the Lord (or Moses) didn’t organize the material to make it easy to understand for those who didn’t get to see the virtual guided tour or YouTube shown to Moses up on Mount Sinai. (Actually, I am sure that Moses was shown something much better than a YouTube.) First we are told to make ten curtains of linen that are 42 feet by 6 feet. These sheets are called ‘curtains’ by both ESV and NLT. So I ask you, when I say ‘curtain’ do you envision something laying horizontally or hanging vertically? My problem in understanding started here, because these are not curtains that hang vertically, but would be better called sheets of cloth that lay over something. These sheets will lay over a framework to make the roof and hang down over the walls on the north and south, and also on the west. The front door faces east. Then the text says that the curtains were joined together on ‘one side’. Because of the word curtain, I always imagined joining the long sheets on the short side, and imagined we were making the curtain fence that was made to surround the Tabernacle. That is wrong again. The Hebrew text never clearly says, but these 42 foot long sheets were actually joined on the long side. That's why joining them required 50 clasps. To me, it helps a lot to simply say right from the beginning of the description that all this is to make the roof of the Tabernacle. There are also other things that are not clear. The Hebrew text doesn’t specifically say that they were to ‘sew’ the 10 sheets into two sets. The Hebrew says they would be ‘joined’ or ‘attached’. The ten sheets were probably sewn together, with five in each set, sewn along the long edge. Each set would then measure 42 feet by 30 feet.  Above the linen layer, there was a slightly bigger goat's hair layer. Over those two layers of cloth, they made a ram’s skin leather layer. The skins were dyed red. Think how many male lambs were sacrificed to make that?! Then a mysterious final layer was placed on top of that. We really don’t know how to translate the material for the top layer. It has been translated as fine goat’s skin, or as sea cow hide. The way we translated it (since no one  knows what it was made of) is to say that it was ‘water proof leather’. Now that you understand about the 4 layers of the roof and walls, let’s take another look at the linen cloth. The NLT says, NLT'07 Exodus 26:1:1 “Make the Tabernacle from ten curtains of finely woven linen. Decorate the curtains with blue, purple, and scarlet thread and with skillfully embroidered cherubim. The Hebrew text is not clear that the pattern was applied by embroidering. Think of the 42 by 30 foot long sheets being spre

Reader: take note, for days 15-37 Greetings and welcome to this second edition of the Reader: Take Note series. This is an occasional series aimed at providing extra commentary and encouragement for those following the Digging Deeper Daily reading plan. No matter where you are in the reading calendar, I hope that the things I share in this episode will support the idea that God’s Word has many treasures for us, and it always pays to dig deeper. If you have questions or comments, my favorite way for you to send messages to me is via the contact button at dailybiblereading.info. I’m always interested to hear your thoughts. On day one of our journey I mentioned Solomon in connection to Job. I challenge you to find similarities to Solomon’s writings in Job, in particular, I am most often thinking of Ecclesiastes. Actually, not all commentators think that Solomon was the writer of Ecclesiastes. But that need not concern us. As for Job, I found in a Wikipedia article that scholars consider that Job was written surprisingly late, from the 7th to 4th century BC. However Solomon lived in the 10th century BC. Other writers think the writing of Job to far predate Soloman. So far I have found no one who supports my hypothesis that Solomon wrote the book of Job. Nevertheless, let’s look at some parallels. Job hated his life and so did Solomon.GW'20 Job 7:16: 16 I hate my life; I do not want to live forever. Leave me alone because my days are so brief. GW'20 Job 9:21: 21 If I am a man of integrity, I have no way of knowing it. I hate my life! GW'20 Job 10:1: 1 “I hate my life. I will freely express my complaint. I will speak as bitterly as I feel. GW'20 Ecclesiastes 2:17: 17 So I came to hate life because everything done under the sun seemed wrong to me. Everything was pointless. ⌞It was like⌟ trying to catch the wind. GW'20 Ecclesiastes 2:18: 18 I came to hate everything for which I had worked so hard under the sun, because I will have to leave it to the person who replaces me. Both Job and Solomon complained that life is hard and futile. GW'20 Job 7:1-4: 1 “Isn’t a mortal’s stay on earth difficult like a hired hand’s daily ⌞work⌟? 2 Like a slave, he longs for shade. Like a hired hand, he eagerly looks for his pay. 3 Likewise, I have been given months that are of no use, and I have inherited nights filled with misery. 4 When I lie down, I ask, ‘When will I get up?’ But the evening is long, and I’m exhausted from tossing about until dawn. GW'20 Ecclesiastes 1:2-3: 2 “Absolutely pointless!” says the spokesman. “Absolutely pointless! Everything is pointless.” 3 What do people gain from all their hard work under the sun? Job chapter 9 is full of the idea that it is futile to argue with God, which agrees with Solomon’s complaints. GW'20 Job 9:14-22: 14 “How can I possibly answer God? How can I find the right words ⌞to speak⌟ with him? 15 Even if I were right, I could not answer ⌞him⌟. I would have to plead for mercy from my judge. 16 If I cried out and he answered me, I do not believe that he would listen to me. 17 He would knock me down with a storm and bruise me without a reason. 18 He would not let me catch my breath. He fills me with bitterness. 19 If it is a matter of strength, then he is the mighty one. If it is about justice, who will charge me with a crime? 20 If I am righteous, my own mouth would condemn me. It would declare that I am corrupt even if I am a man of integrity. 21 If I am a man of integrity, I have no way of knowing it. I hate my life! 22 It is all the same. That is why I say, ‘He destroys ⌞both⌟ the man of integrity and the wicked.’ GW'20 Ecclesiastes 7:13-15: 13 Consider what God has done! Who can straighten what God has bent? 14 When times are good, be happy. But when times are bad, consider this: God has made the one time as well as the other so that mortals cannot predict their future. 15 I have seen it all in my pointless life: Righteous people die in spite of being righteous. Wicked people go on living in spite of being wicked. Unique in Job: The need for a mediator Job 9:32-33: "A human like me cannot answer God, ‘Let’s take our case to court.’ There is no mediator between us to put his hand on both of us." Uncertainty of an afterlife Job 14:10,14: "But a human dies and is powerless. A person breathes his last breath, and where is he? … “If a person dies, will he go on living? I will wait for my relief to come as long as my hard labor continues." Eccl 3:19-22: "Humans and animals have the same destiny. One dies just like the other. All of them have the same breath ⌞of life⌟. Humans have no advantage over animals. All ⌞of life⌟ is pointless. All ⌞life⌟ goes to the same place. All ⌞life⌟ comes from the ground, and all of it goes back to the ground. Who knows whether a human spirit goes upward or whether an animal spirit goes downward to the earth? I saw that there’s nothing better for people to do than to enjoy their work because that is their lot ⌞in life⌟. Who will allow them to see what will happen after them?" The wicked often have seemingly blessed lives Job 21:7-8,13: "“Why do the wicked go on living, grow old, and even become more powerful? They see their children firmly established with them, and they get to see their descendants. … They spend their days in happiness, and they go peacefully to the grave." Eccl 8:10: NLT "I have seen wicked people buried with honor. Yet they were the very ones who frequented the Temple and are now praised in the same city where they committed their crimes! This, too, is meaningless." Eccl 8:14: NLT "And this is not all that is meaningless in our world. In this life, good people are often treated as though they were wicked, and wicked people are often treated as though they were good. This is so meaningless!" Where is wisdom found? Job 12:12,16: "“Wisdom is with the ancient one. The one who has had many days has insight. … “God has power and priceless wisdom. He owns ⌞both⌟ the deceiver and the person who is deceived." Job 28:28: "So he told humans, ‘The fear of the Lord is wisdom! To stay away from evil is understanding.’ ”" See all of chapter 28. There are many verses like that in Proverbs 1-9. I will quote only the most famous: Prov 9:10: "The fear of the LORD is the beginning of wisdom. The knowledge of the Holy One is understanding." We see in these examples that Job is a book to display the author’s struggle with accepting the boundaries that have been placed on human existence by God. This book is much more than just a debate on why God allows good people to suffer. For any of my listeners who actually say, “I hate my life,” I beg you to remember these points: God has given these books of wisdom to help you, and particularly to tell you that He understands your struggles. The writers of the wisdom literature in the Bible did not yet have the wonderful knowledge and promises revealed through Christ. I encourage you to be in close fellowship with believers, and especially with older, experienced believers, who will take the time to listen and pray with you. Turning to Mark I found some interesting ideas about Mark’s Gospel while doing some other reading. Maurice Robinson reports that Warren A. Gage discovered an Elijah sub-theme in Mark. Unfortunately, Gage’s unpublished research was only summarized by Robinson, and I have not been successful in getting a response from Dr. Gage to get his complete article. According to Gage, we could say that Mark presents Jesus as the new Elijah. (Evidently there is a similar sub-theme in John’s Gospel with Moses.) Not only does Mark overtly use Elijah’s name 9 times, but he alludes to Elijah around nine more times. Allusions to Elijah frame the beginning and the end of Mark, and the overt mentions occupy a long stretch in the middle of this Gospel.  Mark 1:2 (Mal. 3:1; 4:5) WEBBE Mark 1:2: 2 As it is written in the prophets, “Behold, I send my messenger before your face, who will prepare your way before you: WEBBE Malachi 3:1: 1 “Behold, I send my messenger, and he will prepare the way before me; and the Lord, whom you seek, will suddenly come to his temple; and the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, behold, he comes!” says the LORD of Armies. WEBBE Malachi 4:5-6: 5 Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and terrible day of the LORD comes. 6 He will turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the earth with a curse.” When Mal 3:1 and 4:5 are paired together, we see that the messenger prophesied to come is identified as Elijah.  By the way, Mal 4:6 should remind you of what John’s father (Zechariah) said a week after John’s birth. 1:6 GW'20 Mark 1:6: 6 John was dressed in clothes made from camel’s hair. He wore a leather belt around his waist and ate locusts and wild honey. In our Indonesian translation, we have a footnote at this verse which says that John’s clothes and food choices would have reminded Jews of his day of Elijah. After all, Elijah spent a long time living alone in the wilderness. 12–14 GW'20 Mark 1:12-13: 12 At once the Spirit brought him into the desert, 13 where he was tempted by Satan for 40 days. He was there with the wild animals, and the angels took care of him. This can remind us of when Elijah was in the wilderness and ravens brought him food (1Kings 17), and chapter 19 when an angel fed him before Elijah took the long journey to Mt. Horeb. 7:24–25 GW'20 Mark 7:24: 24 Jesus left that place and went to the territory of Tyre. He didn’t want anyone to know that he was staying in a house there. However, it couldn’t be kept a secret. This can remind us of Elijah, when the stream dried up, and when he then went and a widow in this same area took care of him. Both stories take place in the same Gentile territory. In the case of the widow of Zerephath (1Kings 17), Elijah raised her son from death. In Jesus’ case, He expelled a demon from a Greek woman’s daughter. ————Explicit mentions of Elijah

Greetings and welcome to this first edition of an occasional series of podcasts that I am starting to add extra commentary for those following the Digging Deeper Daily reading plan. I hope that the things I share in this episode will be relevant to those who have arrived at day number 14. I have taken the title for this series from Mark 13:14 (GW). As Jesus is prophesying in that chapter about the destruction of Jerusalem, he says, “When you see the disgusting thing that will cause destruction standing where it should not (let the reader take note), those of you in Judea should flee to the mountains.” [God’s Word Translation] The parenthetical note, “let the reader take note” probably was addressed to the one who read out loud to others. In Mark’s day, not many people in a congregation would know how to read. The Greek word for ‘read’ in this verse actually means ‘to read out loud’. Because of that, some commentators feel that this warning to understand was not just for the reader, but was intended as a plea to the reader to explain to his listeners about Daniel’s prophecy that mentions ‘the disgusting thing that will cause destruction’. So here I am, your reader (for the whole Bible, not just Mark’s Gospel). I thought it might be helpful to you to give some information that doesn’t fit in the daily podcasts, but I still, of course, will not have time to answer all questions. My intent is to encourage you to dig deeper by sharing things I find to be interesting and inspiring in the passages you have read or listened to already in the 3D plan. If you have questions or comments, my favorite way for you to send messages to me is via the contact button at dailybiblereading.info. Incidentally, from now on I will quote a lot from the translation called God’s Word for the Nations, because I am personally reading that version in my own devotional readings this year. And this year I personally am reading a real-book Bible. See the godsword.org site linked in the episode notes for information on how you can get a gorgeous GW Bible at a great price. And the newest edition is available in YouVersion and the MyBible app. (GW'20) The first verse I would like to share about is Genesis 1:1 (NLT). “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Some translations say ‘heaven’ singular, but the Hebrew is actually plural, ‘heavens’. When my team and I translated that into Indonesian, because Indonesians haven’t previously known a concept of plural heavens, we translated this verse as, “… God created the levels of heaven and the sky.”  When Scripture talks of plural heavens, the sky is the lowest layer, and ancient people had the concept that there were three or perhaps seven layers of heaven. Some of you will recall that Paul was caught up to the ‘third heaven’ in 2 Corinthians 12. It is for this reason that I see verse one as not being a summary of what is to come in Genesis 1-2, but as a hint of acts of creation that we are not told about which happened before the creation of this world. There were principalities and powers and myriads of angels in the heavenly places that were put there before God started counting the six days of creation. To me, it is kind of awesome to think about that. Now quoting from Genesis 1:14 (NLT), “Then God said, “Let lights appear in the sky to separate the day from the night. Let them be signs to mark the seasons, days, and years.” Instead of ‘seasons’ the God’s Word translation translates ‘religious festivals’.  The word that can mean ‘seasons’ as NLT translated it is normally translated ‘religious festivals’ all throughout the rest of the OT. In our Indonesian translation, we translated it as ‘seasons’ but we provided a footnote to tell readers that this word often is translated as ‘religious festivals’. Here’s the thing I think that is neat about this: Translators have frequently chosen to translate ‘seasons’ because it is kind of strange to talk of religious festivals when there are not yet any people on earth on the 4th day of creation. BUT consider this: God was preparing all of creation, including the sun and moon, to support humans who would worship Him. We can say that the love and worship of Himself was God’s ultimate goal in the creation of the universe. We exist for his worship. In Genesis 4:19-21 we read that, “Lamech married two women, one named Adah and the other Zillah. Adah gave birth to Jabal. He was the first person to live in tents and have livestock. His brother’s name was Jubal. He was the first person to play the harp and the flute.” Isn’t it interesting that the harp and flute are mentioned so early in human history! Certainly Jubal not only played the flute and harp, but he invented and constructed the first ones as well. I think this little story shows that God wanted to provide for glorious worship of Himself. Did you realize that when you hear an instrument play a note, that you don’t just hear that note, but harmonic frequencies above that note. It is the relative strength and weaknesses of the harmonics that lets us hear the difference between the sounds of a harp, flute, trumpet, and all the other instruments.  As I play a low D on the piano, I will help you hear the harmonics. Fundamental note D, octave D, 5th above that, then the octave again, and then another D, and the last that I will play is a third, F#. That forms a D major chord. This happens to be the same overtones that can be gotten with a simple flute made of PVC pipe keeping all my fingers down. The natural harmonics of the strings of a harp or piano or guitar, form a major chord. The natural harmonics of well-constructed flutes form a major chord. God built this system right into the atmosphere and physics of our world. There is a reason why people think songs in major keys are happy sounding. Our ears like the resonance that naturally occurs due to the reinforcement of overtones. I think God intended this beautiful resonance. God created the human ear, in order to give the delight of hearing beautiful music. Note also that God designed the human hand so that simple instruments like a harp and flute can be played easily with our fingers, like when I play a scale on a flute with just 6 finger holes. Then consider how beautiful our voices are when we sing. My friend Arie Scholten says, “When people sing in unison together, we each coordinate 26 muscles together in unity, and the devil hates both the sound and that unity.” Our Creator is awesome and deserves awesome praise. Ps 66:1-2: "Shout happily to God, all the earth! Make music to praise the glory of his name. Make his praise glorious." Now let me explain something that people always ask about: NLT Genesis 6:1-4: 1 Then the people began to multiply on the earth, and daughters were born to them. 2 The sons of God saw the beautiful women and took any they wanted as their wives. 3 Then the LORD said, “My Spirit will not put up with humans for such a long time, for they are only mortal flesh. In the future, their normal lifespan will be no more than 120 years.” 4 In those days, and for some time after, giant Nephilites lived on the earth, for whenever the sons of God had intercourse with women, they gave birth to children who became the heroes and famous warriors of ancient times. NLT Genesis 6:5: 5 The LORD observed the extent of human wickedness on the earth, … So who are these sons of God? There are many interpretations of what kind of ‘sons’ are intended. Most interpretations can be classified into two alternatives: 1) The children of God intended are fallen angels— those who sided with the devil in his rebellion, then they were punished by God and thrown into this world. Those angels are now called evil spirits or demons. If so, maybe the spirits possessed male humans, and in that way married the girls. 2) Or, the children of God intended are descendants of Seth. This is in accordance with many verses in the OT that call the Israelites— all of whom were descendants of Seth— as ‘sons of God’. In Ex. 4:22, the nation of Israel is also called the ‘firstborn son’ of God.  Personally the 2nd choice seems fanciful and naive to me. It seems that something ugly and evil is implied, so I go with the first choice. I think that we must admit that we do not always have enough information to interpret things like this.  GW'20 Deuteronomy 29:29: 29 Some things are hidden. They belong to the LORD our God. But the things that have been revealed in these teachings belong to us and to our children forever. We must obey every word of these teachings. The two interpretations I have shared are not harmonious with Job 1:6 and 2:1 where ‘sons of God’ are also mentioned. I don’t think you will find one totally satisfactory conclusion about this that will explain this for both contexts. Whoever the supermen were in Genesis, they were wiped out in the flood. The two interpretations I just mentioned are not harmonious with Job 1:6-8 or 2:1. I don’t think a harmonious interpretation exists for the ‘sons of God’ in both Genesis and Job. And so, let’s segue to Job. GW'20 Job 1:6-8: 6 One day when the sons of God came to stand in front of the LORD, Satan the Accuser came along with them. 7 The LORD asked Satan, “Where have you come from?” Satan answered the LORD, “From wandering all over the earth.” 8 The LORD asked Satan, “Have you thought about my servant Job? No one in the world is like him! He is a man of integrity: He is decent, he fears God, and he stays away from evil.” GW'20 Job 2:1: 1 One day when the sons of God came to stand in front of the LORD, Satan the Accuser came along with them. The ‘sons of God’ here seem to be angelic princes who never lived on earth and did not participate in the fall. But whatever they are, it makes no difference because they play no part in the story. We just get the impression that the heavenly nobility have assembled for a meeting of the court around God’s throne. These heavenly nobility are part of the principalities and powers

Greetings friends to this end of the year podcast! Before I share my own stories, I want to give you our last two Listener Stories for 2020, one from Tom and another from Tammy. I think Tammy’s story is especially interesting because the Coronavirus pandemic had a big impact on her. I think her story will resonate with many of you.  Hello, my name is Tammy.  I recently retired from being a principal and before that a school teacher, a job I had done and loved for over 30 years.  I had oodles of plans for what I was going to do, places I was going to go and things I was really looking forward to doing-  like working with children at our church this summer.  When COVID hit and closed down school as we knew it on March 13, 2020, my life really changed.  I didn’t get to say goodbye to my students, parents and staff, it just all ended that Friday in March.  I was really struggling with what to me felt like a major loss. (This is in no way to disrespect those that have had greater losses due to COVID.) I was talking to my husband explaining how I was feeling such an absence of being needed and like I was just wandering looking for what I was supposed to be doing with my life at this time.  My sweet husband said some very wise words to me.  He said, “Tammy, I believe God is just giving you this down time to recharge you and prepare you for what He has planned next for you to do for Him.  Take this time and use it to its best.”  While I knew he was right, I have to say I DON’T  do down time well.  When you work 60 hours a week for oodles of years and have people consistently needing things from you, to have that come to a screeching halt, really put me off kilter.   I was struggling trying to figure out what God wanted me to do.  Then one morning in my devotion time God put on my heart that I have been wanting to complete a read through the Bible in a year program for a long time.  Even though it was August, I thought, this doesn’t have to wait until January to be a New Year’s Resolution, it can be my New Life Resolution. What a blessing this decision has been!  I looked at all different types of programs.  I found Digging Deeper Daily and liked the explanation of how this program was laid out. I wanted to learn about the “threads that unify the message of the Old and New Testaments”. I also like the fact that there were brief devotional notes that I thought would help me see the connections clearer.   I started this journey on August 20th and upon hearing the first reading, I fell in love with this journey.  Phil’s voice was so calming and yet assured in what he was saying and reading.  The brief stories he shares of his work as a Bible translator make me feel like I have a new friend.  This adventure has helped me grow daily in my understanding of God’s word.   Being a Christian since a child, I had heard many stories from the bible, now I understand more deeply what was happening before, during and after those isolated events.  It has really helped make the Bible come to life for me.   Phil explains how he started this project as a gift to leave his grandchildren.  He wanted to read the entire bible to them.  I feel his love each morning as I listen to him read and explain the daily passage, its as if for those brief moments I have been adopted into his family.  This has not only been a way for me to learn more about the Bible, grow closer to God, but also to feel like I am being gathered into the fold each morning.   The brief explanations at the end of the readings are so helpful.  I always look forward to the prayer Phil delivers to close the devotional time.  Often, I will replay the prayer a time or two more.  At the end of “our time together” I try to conclude with a prayer for Phil and all those doing God’s work to bring His word to the nations that don’t have the Bible yet.  This reminder of what a gift the Bible is to us, that I often take for granted because I haven’t known a time without it, has made my daily time with God even more precious.   Early on in the program, Phil was reading to us from Matthew.  When He read Matthew 11:28 which says, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” I cried.  This to me reiterated what my husband told me.    I was in need of this passage.  When Phil read this verse, with such love in his voice, I felt as if it was God speaking it to me.  I needed rest, yet I wouldn’t let myself admit it.  Now, each morning I consider my time listening to Phil read God’s word as a time of rest, connection and recharging.   I can’t wait to find out what great adventure God has in store for me next, or where He needs me in this stage of life, what I do know though is that Phil Fields and Digging Deeper Daily will be on that amazing ride with me.   Thanks so much, Tammy, for your story! And with a sincere blush, I also say thanks for your kind words. I am so pleased— more than that— filled with joy, when people are able to look through the kind of one-way mirror that podcasting is, to become my friends and even adopted family.  Thanks to Tom giving me this next story. Tom is mainly a reader (not a regular podcast listener). The 3D YouVersion plan he has followed for 2020 is called Read To Me Daily. (Link given in the episode notes.) Tom is a long time friend, dating back to my music teaching days. There is one odd, totally unplanned, similarity between his story and Tammy’s. I think you will catch it. My name is Tom and I am a sixty-year-old Arkansan.  I have read through the Bible several times using different plans.  The last few times, using electronic media, such as Digging Deeper Daily, has aided me greatly through ease of access.  Reading the Bible entirely in one year gives one little time for Bible study, but I value the discipline of daily reading which stirs my thoughts and continually whets my appetite to, what else, dig deeper. I read through the Bible this year using the Amplified Bible, Classic Edition.  In the past I have used various translations and even some paraphrases and I may have been wiser to use the recommended New Living Translation or Good News Translation.  Instead, however, I wanted to use the AMPC this year to slow me down.  The many bracketed words and phrases in the AMPC which are used to further describe a translated word or passage, forced me to ponder over a word or passage and think about how an idea was being explained.  I did enjoy the New Living Translation as well as the Good News Translation versions referenced most often in the devotionals.  I found multiple translations of the same verses to be quite helpful. Most years when using a daily reading plan I plowed right past the devotional passages and read only the scripture.  This year I was determined to include reading the devotionals, again, to slow me down and to help me think about what I was reading.  I enjoyed reading the Digging Deeper Daily devotionals which often gave the translator’s perspective of a passage, citing examples of difficult passages to translate and including real-life examples of working with an indigenous people group to help them understand the Bible.  In addition to translation notes, I appreciated the occasional summaries from prior days, reminding me of an important passage, even to the point of repeating some passages over consecutive days for emphasis.  I also appreciated being prodded by the devotional to live up to its title to, here it is again, dig deeper into particular passages. I appreciated how the daily readings were divided up between Old and New Testaments, particularly saving Isaiah for the end of the calendar year with so many relevant passages for the advent season.  My favorite passage, personally, occurred late in the calendar year on September 21.  Matthew 11:28-30, “Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you.  Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.” (NLT)  I am never more at peace than when I surrender to Christ’s yoke. Finally, while I spent the year in the daily reading plan rather than listening to the daily podcasts, I did enjoy utilizing the audio podcasts through the Old Testament genealogies. 😊 Thanks for those great comments, Tom! I rejoice just as much for those who read the Bible for themselves, as I do for those listening to podcasts. Before I share my own story, I want to say that I have revised the Read This First site, trying to make it easy to find information helpful to readers and listeners. The Read This First site is prominently linked at dailybiblereading.info. For this first thing I want to share with you, I am reaching back to 1993. If you are one who reads along while listening, you will have noticed that I have a short list of words I substitute in the Bible text. When the text says ‘faith’, I normally read ‘fully believing’ instead. I have explained this in several podcasts, where I mainly just complain about how fuzzy the term ‘faith’ has become. However today I would like to tell the story of when this truth really came to my attention. By 1993, we had been in the Orya translation project for 9 years. We had learned the language and translated books like Mark and James. The story I am about to tell happened when I was in the remote village of Guay without my family, and the translation team and I were working on revising Acts. A man I did not know well, Nahe, came up to me on Sunday morning and asked to have a private conversation with me that night. I agreed and he came. He told me this story: You would not have heard this, but I died and came back to life. This happened in another village out on the coast where I was working. When I came to and started breathing again, the people were already building my coffin. While I was dead, I went to heaven. I saw how the people in heaven were rejoicing and

Today I am sharing four listener stories.  Before I do that, I want to respond to Sunny and Nate, who commented on my pronunciation of Bible names in the podcasts. Surely others have wondered about this, so let me explain. Some may, like Sunny, assume that I am saying the names right. (Well after all, one would think a Bible translator ought to know the right pronunciation!) So here’s my (somewhat embarrassed) explanation of what I have done. After studying a few other languages, I consider the standard English pronunciations of the letters a, i, and e, in many Bible names to be ugly. I really wish I could start a trend to pronounce Bible names differently! Basically, what I have done is to take the English spellings and pronounce them with the pure phonetic vowels of the Indonesian language. I don’t like pronouncing the letter a or e in multiple ways like English, so instead of pronouncing the two a’s differently in ‘Ray-h@b’s name, I say her name ‘Rahab’. And instead of Heze’kEYEya, I pronounce his name He’ZEKya when reading the Bible text. When reading my introductions, I try to give the correct English pronunciation. So my pronunciations cannot be called ‘right’ or even consistent, but pronouncing names with the pure vowels of the Indonesian language happens to make some names more like the Hebrew or Greek pronunciation. I strived to be more consistent in my pronunciation choices in the GNT podcast series. I send my thanks to Catherine and Luisa, who have given us our first two listener stories. Here they are: Before I play the next two listener stories, I have some listener feedback from Joy. She had a story like Julie from my last podcast with listener stories, but she added this little PS: Along with following another whole reading plan this year, she also read the YouVersion plan named Day by Day with Billy Graham. This is a 366 day reading plan, which often gives a reading of only one verse and a very short and interesting and pointed devotional thought. This has got to be a good one, because it has 50,000 completions. The link to this reading plan is in the episode notes. Our next story is from Iryna. I couldn’t place her accent, and when I took a guess, I was way wrong. She is from Crimea, which became a Russian territory in 2014. She writes that her name (Iryna) derives from Greek, which is true for many names in Russia and the Ukraine. Her name means peace. Iryna is married to an Australian and they live in Australia. Many thanks to Iryna. She sent pictures of two of the verses she has illustrated for the walls of their home. These can be seen at the bottom of the home page of the Read This First site. The link for that site is in the program notes, and it is the first link found at dailybiblereading.info. Next I want to send my thanks to Nicole for this last listener story today. Her testimony wins the prize for being the best recommendation the Daily Bible Reading Podcast has ever received. So thanks, Nicole, for your very kind words.  If you have questions or comments, my favorite way for you to contact me is via the Contact link at dailybiblereading.info.  As I said in the podcast a couple of days ago (Three 3D Stories from Listeners), I will publish a podcast on December 31 which will contain my personal story including insights from my own Bible reading and Bible translation work.  1Ths 5:23-24: GNT “May the God who gives us peace make you holy in every way and keep your whole being — spirit, soul, and body — free from every fault at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you will do it, because he is faithful.” May the Lord bless you ‘Read Good’!

I am sharing three audio listener stories in this podcast in preparation for a Special Podcast that will be released on December 31. If you started the Digging Deeper Daily reading plan on January 1st this year, I hope you have remembered that this is a leap year. Some of you heard a Christmas day greeting today, that was one day early. Because of leap year, there would be no podcast released for December 31st, so I will release a special edition for that day. I have received 8 encouraging listener and reader testimonies that I will share in the next days, and these will all be linked on the Read This First site that is linked at dailybiblereading.info. You can easily share these stories by using the share buttons, or all of them will be available all year on the home page of the Read This First site. Before playing the first listener story, I would like to tell you that my YouTube video entitled How to Study the Bible — for beginners is back on the same page, the home page of the Read This First site. It is also linked in the episode notes for this podcast: https://youtu.be/sPyAp8ZxDBE Beth started listening to the Daily Bible Reading podcast this year, and she contacted me early in the year. I later enjoyed a video call with Beth and her husband Steve, as they are interested in Beth getting involved in Bible translation. She sent me this message: Our next listener story is from Julie. I will expand on some of the things Julie mentions. First let’s listen to her message: Julie is correct, even though some people seem to listen to me for more than one year at a time, I don’t encourage anyone to do this. (Hey, you can always come back after a few years, like Julie will.) I am listing links to the three Bible reading plans I usually mention: Daily Audio Bible with Brian Hardin Bible in One Year 2021 by Nicky Gumbel Daily Radio Bible by Hunter (and I don’t easily find his last name). If you decide to still follow the Digging Deeper Reading plan, but would like to listen to a different voice for the Bible readings, Julie was right. My favorite option for the audio for the plan is to sign up for the Read To Me Daily YouVersion reading plan, listen to the NIVUK version, which is read by the famous actor David Suche. Then Julie gives me the opportunity to say this also: There are two meaning-based translations that I hope every Christian reads all the way through at least in their lifetime. They are the New Living Translation (NLT) and the Good News Translation (GNT or GNB, also previously known as the Today’s English Version TEV). Many people fail in their plans to read the Bible in a year if they use a literal translation. Literal translations are great for study, especially when paired with a meaning-based translation. But literal translations are not friendly especially in audio form. That is why I have recorded the Digging Deeper Daily Bible reading plan in two translations: the NLT and the GNT. If you go to dailybiblereading.info, the GNT podcast site is right in the top bar. Here is the link: dailygntbiblereading.info. Our last listener story is from Laura. I want to say a big Thank You to Beth, Julie, and Laura. The podcast on December 31 will contain my own story of things that have been meaningful to me this year, both in my reading and Bible translation work. I also have five more listener stories that I will publish like this in the next few days.

The year has been flying by for Gale and me. For the most part, we have not been too inconvenienced by the pandemic and are healthy. I hope the same for you! How has it gone with you in listening to the Daily Bible Reading podcast, or following the Digging Deeper Daily reading plan? I would be very interested in hearing back from you, and for you to tell me about things like this: If you are a listener, what podcast app are you using to listen, or do you use our website? If you have a favorite app that you would recommend to others, please tell me what you like about it. Have you experienced difficulties in finding your next day's podcast? Have you experienced any difficulties while using the YouVersion Bible app? To share with me, just reply to this message. Just before the beginning of next year, I will report back on what I learn from your responses. If you have enjoyed this year's readings or podcasts, please give our website address to your friends: dailybiblereading.info. Many of you who started 2020 with day 1 of our Digging Deeper Daily reading plan have just started an intensive course in Bible prophecy that will run to the end of this year— with readings in Ezekiel, Isaiah, minor prophets and Revelation. I want to touch on just a few important points. One is that human teachers never get their interpretations of prophecy correct. The prophets in Jerusalem didn't know what God was going to do in Ezekiel's day, The Jews didn't get it right about what the Messiah would do. Just the other day I heard a radio preacher teaching an ordering of events for the end times that I think will be proved way wrong. Remember, God possesses all wisdom, and humans predicting what God will do based on prophecy have gotten it wrong time after time. (So I will only dare give a few major points below!) If you are like me, we have joined Paul and John in praying "Come, Lord Jesus!" For a lot of my life, I have wished that I could see the Lord fulfill some prophecies signalling a quickening of the pace toward the return of Jesus. Guess what folks! Things are happening, and now we're saying, "Oh Lord, please stop it!" We all know that we are to avoid any marks on our hands and foreheads that could resemble any interpretation of 666. Those who refuse to receive the mark of the beast won't be able to buy or sell. But I sort of missed the implication that we who don't follow the beast's party line will one day be locked out of social media, sources of impartial news, and probably even the whole Internet.  Let's not miss this often-repeated warning: We must learn to trust the Lord and endure in faithfulness to Him no matter what happens. Please consider what God has done in the past. He told Abraham what would happen to the Jews. Then it happened: They were enslaved in Egypt, and then God brought them back to the promised land, just as He said He would. No other God has done something like that! Then God told Moses, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Isaiah (and others) about a similarly big thing that would happen. Over and over we read that the Jewish people would be unfaithful and would be exiled to far-away country— to Babylon, as it turns out. But God promised to return them to their country. Then in Isaiah, God even tells the name of the king who would allow the Jews to return to Israel, some hundreds of years before it happened. In that same passage God Himself asks the readers, "What other God has ever done something like that?!" God told the exiled people that he would take care of them in exile, and He did. So, I am sure that God will take care of us in whatever suffering (even tribulation) that we face. “This means that God's holy people must endure persecution patiently and remain faithful.” (Rev. 13:10) We will see in our prophecy readings that many things that God predicts eventually get fulfilled multiple times. One of the chief examples of this is Daniel's prophecy about a king who would oppose the people of God. "The king will do as he pleases, exalting himself and claiming to be greater than every god, even blaspheming the God of gods." Extending from Roman kings, to Hitler, and now into our time, the closer we come to the end, the more like the antichrist our rulers will become. We hate to see this happen! But there is a comforting side: God is in control. He is not surprised by what is happening. The best thing we can do to prepare for the times to come is to study His Word. Use God's Word to answer those who do not know the truth. More and more I pray for God to open minds. 2Cor. 4:3 says that “Satan, who is the god of this world, has blinded the minds of those who don't believe. They are unable to see the glorious light of the Good News. …” In verse 6 Paul says, “For God, who said, ‘Let there be light in the darkness,’ has made this light shine in our hearts so we could know the glory of God that is seen in the face of Jesus Christ.” Just so, I am confident that as YOU lovingly share the simple Good News with people, God will turn on the lights in the minds of some to behold the glory. But as Paul says in verse 7, “We now have this light shining in our hearts, but we ourselves are like fragile clay jars containing this great treasure.” That's how God wants us to be at this time. Join the club feeling fragile! If you are in the USA, I urge you to know the issues and vote. In Revelation, Jesus' saying, "He that has and ear let him hear," is repeated eight times. And of course, there are many times in the Gospels where Jesus says that. I have been amazed as a Bible translator at how many times I have needed to revise that saying. It is very hard to get that one right! Recently we revised all those verses in our Indonesian translation. Let me tell you that that saying always points backward. Jesus is not telling people to listen to what He's going to say. He's telling people to pay attention to what He's just said. In our Indonesian translation, the problem was that— the way we had expressed it— Jesus was coming off as angry or impolite. We had translated like what I have given as the meaning in the Daily Bible Reading podcast: "Ya got ears, don't ya?! Well listen!" So in searching for an answer, Balazi (the head of our translation program) said, "Ya know, there's something that Indonesian teachers and pastors say frequently, and here it is: Don't let what I've said go in your right ear and straight out your left." In English we say, "Don't let what I said just go in one ear and out the other!" That's our translation of Jesus' saying, except there needs to be one last command: "Meditate on it!" Yes, meditate on it! That's what we need to be doing with all our Bible readings at the end of this year. The Daily Bible Reading podcast has done well in 2020. Our daily downloads are about 50% higher than around February, or on many days are 90% higher than they were last year at this same time. Amazing things are happening in Indonesia. I normally would be there now, but not this year. My next trip will happen the spring of next year, Lord willing. You on this list did not get my updates about our work, but you can see our August letter here and our October letter here.  May the Lord bless you ‘real good’! Phil

Please see this episode at dailybiblereading.info and download the PDF file attached to that episode.

I’m really thankful for all of you Bible readers and listeners! I hope that you are staying healthy. Gale and I are fine.  I am thankful to see that DBRP listeners are a faithful bunch. I can tell from the download statistics that many of you have kept on listening daily even in the worst of the Covid19 epidemic. Some of you skip listening on the weekends because you listen while commuting to work, but you catch up again during the work week. Keep it up, friends! In our troubled times, knowing God’s Word is the rock and anchor we need. For some DBRP listeners, especially for any listeners who are not in sync with those who started listening on January first, you might have difficulty finding your next episode at certain times of the year. (This has to do with how episodes are rescheduled for broadcasting.) If it ever happens that you can’t find the day number you want, you should always be able to find that day’s episode at our website, dailybiblereading.info. Another cause of the problem could be the podcast app you are using. It will help if you choose a podcast app that allows you to track your position in the calendar and automatically download a certain number of episodes in advance. Please share your favorite app for that with me, so that I can add the information to our website. I want to express thanks to my volunteer secretary, Vicky Pool, who does the queuing up DBRP episodes every week. After I have my Bible reading time in the morning, I listen to a podcast I hope you have heard about called The World And Everything In It. It gives world news from a Biblically-based world view. If you haven’t listened to it, I recommend that you give it a try. I want to apologize to all those who are listening to the NLT Daily Bible Reading Podcasts. I have been listening to those again this year, one day ahead of people who started on January first. I keep finding mistakes and have fixed quite a few of them, and I have made notes for fixing some episodes later. But here is the main problem: The NLT series was recorded when I was new to podcasting. The initial recording quality was awful for half of the year. So when I now record little improvements (perhaps a sentence or two), the voice quality is significantly different. Some episodes have become a patchwork quilt, with corrections or improvements made over time, which make me sound like five different men. Oh, and by the way, back in 2014 when I first made those podcasts, I was using an older edition of the NLT.  This leaves me with a problem: I am very focused now on my Bible translation work for Indonesia. I cannot take the time this year or next to re-record the NLT Bible series, either in part or all of it. Someday, I hope to record the whole Bible again, but not now. But I have thought of the solution! How about if YOU record a 20 minute podcast episode for one of the days in 2021?! How about if there were voices from all around the globe that would do this, and we could look forward to hearing from different people every day? We have time to make this happen for 2021 if we start now. But I will need several volunteers who will be willing to act as editors and organizers for this. If you want to hear more about this opportunity, I will give more information after the close of this podcast. Some of you have been interested in what I have shared in the EveryWord podcast series, for which I have published just 4 episodes and will soon publish the 5th. This is the podcast where I read from Wilbur Pickering’s translation of the NT which is entitled The Sovereign Creator Has Spoken. I have had a difficult time making the 5th episode, making several starts, then scraping that material and starting over. After praying about it, I have decided to cover the ending of Mark 16 in this next episode. Verses 9-20 of Mark 16 are enclosed in brackets in most Bibles today, but should they be?! Recently a fellow missionary serving in Indonesia heard me mention that we support using the Majority Text for Bible translations, and he fired back the question, “Do you think that Mark 16:9-20 was part of the original text?” I feel that the answer to that question is vitally important. Here are a few verses that have stood out to me in Ps 119 recently: Ps 119:89: Lamedh Your eternal word, O LORD, stands firm in heaven. Now I wasn’t thinking of textual variants in Greek when I marked that. We can be comforted in our time that there is one thing that can be an anchor for our hearts and minds in this troubled time. God is in control and He is causing his purposes to be fulfilled. Let’s recommend God’s unchanging Word as the answer and source of truth for this world which has lost its moorings. Ps 119:105: Nun Your word is a lamp to guide my feet and a light for my path. These verses comfort me in a time when we all seem so vulnerable and the world seems to be falling apart: Ps 119:114,116: 114 You are my refuge and my shield; your word is my source of hope.  116 LORD, sustain me as you promised, that I may live! Do not let my hope be crushed. Ps 119:123: 123 My eyes strain to see your rescue, to see the truth of your promise fulfilled. Let’s pray: Lord, we call out to You, and we seek at this time to more sincerely put all our hope in You. Be our strong tower, our place of refuge, and the source of our quiet confidence. Please open our minds to be able to find treasures in your Word that will give us new hope, not just for ourselves, but also to share with others. At this time our eyes strain to see your rescue, especially to see Jesus coming back again. No matter how You choose to rescue us today, please let your Word and your presence with us be our source of joy. May the Lord bless you, ‘real good’!   Now if you are staying around to hear more about what I am hoping for next year, here is what I hope some of you will want to participate in. I love the way the podcasts for The World and Everything In It start, with a new voice giving a greeting, telling who they are and perhaps a sentence about where they are and what they do. I would like opening greetings to be like that for each episode recorded by you and other listeners next year, and your voice would continue to read the day’s Bible readings. You could base your introductory comments and the prayer at the end on mine, or you could embroider and improve on what I have written down. If you want to, feel free to involve other members of your family in your recording. Another difference for next year: You can choose which version you would like to read from a list I will provide.  To do these recordings, we hope that you are someone who can read in such a way that listeners can follow the meaning. I freely admit that I often have to record some sentences three or more times before I get them down without mistakes and carrying the intonation I am aiming for. So if you are someone who makes mistakes like me, then I hope that you can edit your audio file yourself, or be willing to learn that skill. It isn’t hard, and someone else will help polish the file you give us. I hope that next year we will hear old and young voices, voices that reveal different ethnicities, and speaking with accents from various regions and countries.  I need several people who will be able to help me put all this together. One would be someone who could manage the audio polishing process I just mentioned. We will give more pointers about how to make good recordings to people who express interest. The best way to contact me is to use the contact button at dailybiblereading.info.  And again, Gale and I say, May the Lord bless you ‘real good’!

EveryWord004 Welcome to this FOURTH episode of the Every Word Podcast. This is a podcast series for those who enjoy studying details found in God’s Word. In every episode I will read from Dr. Wilbur Pickering’s fresh-sounding translation of the New Testament, which he named, “The Sovereign Creator Has Spoken.” In today’s episode, I will read and comment on Pickering’s translation of Mark chapter 3. The episode notes for this podcast provide the text of everything I’m saying and links to supporting documentation. Dr. Pickering’s translation is based on the Majority Text of the Greek New Testament, which is also called the Byzantine Text. This podcast series shows why the Majority Greek Text is superior to the Eclectic Greek Text, which was used as the basis of most of the NT translations of the last century.  The shift in the Greek text used for English Bible translations began in 1881, with the publication of Wescott and Hort’s Greek New Testament, which was based on an extremely small sampling of manuscripts of the Alexandrian Text Type— that is from Egypt.  [The main two manuscripts they relied on are Codex Sinaiticus (abbreviation א [Aleph] or 01) and Codex Vaticanus (abbreviation B or 03). Those are dated at 3_3_0—3_6_0 AD and 3_0_0—3_2_5 respectively.]  At the time Wescott and Hort were working, it was anticipated that research into the most ancient manuscripts newly discovered in Egypt would reveal a coherent textual stream that would point to the authentic initial form of the Greek text. Now, over a century later, those ancient Egyptian manuscripts have been analyzed, but they do not reveal a coherent textual stream that can be followed. Instead they reveal that Egyptian scribes very freely edited the texts they copied. In contrast, the Majority Text of the New Testament was made by copyists who lived in the same places as the original recipients of the apostles’ writings. Individual scribal errors have been weeded out, since this text type is based on the majority reading of thousands of Greek manuscripts. The Majority Text has been stable over the centuries and is the best academically defendable text of the Greek New Testament that we have today. It is my hope that these podcasts will build awareness of the faulty Greek text that underlies almost all of the English Bible translations of the last century, starting with the ASV (1901), and including RSV, NASB, NIV, GNT, NLT, NET, and ESV. Mark 3:  A Sabbath healing—the rejection Another time He went into the synagogue, and there was a man there with a withered hand. ² So they watched Him closely, whether He would heal him on the Sabbath, so that they might accuse Him. ³ Well He says to the man with the withered hand, “Come out in the middle”. ⁴ Then He said to them: “Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill?” But they remained silent. ⁵ After looking around at them with anger, being grieved at the hardness of their hearts,  *They had no compassion, no agape; their only concern was to preserve their system, their position and authority.  He says to the man, “Stretch out your hand!” So he stretched [it out], and his hand was restored as healthy as the other!  *Perhaps 5% of the Greek manuscripts omit ‘as healthy as the other’, as in NIV, NASB, LB, TEV, etc. ⁶ Then the Pharisees went straight out, and with the Herodians  *Pharisees and Herodians were political opponents, so this was a strange alliance; evidently they perceived Jesus as a common enemy; such a serious enemy that He needed destroying.  started hatching a plot against Him, how they might destroy Him.   PCF: The variant that Pickering shows us here is just returning three short words to the Greek text. While we already would know that the man’s hand was restored, it is nice to know that Jesus didn’t just give partial healing to this man. The hand wasn’t just better and useful again, but was just as strong as his other hand.   Healings by the sea Jesus withdrew with His disciples to the sea; and a large crowd from Galilee followed Him—also from Judea, ⁸ from Jerusalem, from Idumea and beyond Jordan; even those around Tyre and Sidon. A huge crowd came to Him, having heard the sorts of things He kept doing. ⁹ So He told His disciples that a small boat should be kept ready for Him because of the crowd, lest they should press in on Him. ¹⁰ Because He had healed many, so that as many as had afflictions were pushing toward Him so as to touch Him. ¹¹ And the unclean spirits—whenever one saw Him, he would fall down before Him and cry out, saying, “You are the son of God!” ¹² And He kept giving them strict orders that they should not make Him known.  *I wonder why the demons felt compelled to proclaim who Jesus was, evidently. I would say that He generally has the opposite problem with us!   PCF: I like how Pickering translated two imperfect Greek verbs in this section using ‘kept’. (v. 8 and 12) The imperfect shows a prolonged situation or in this case a repeated action.   The Twelve chosen He went up on the mountain and summoned those whom He wanted, and they came to Him. ¹⁴ He appointed twelve,  *Less than 2% of the Greek manuscripts, of objectively inferior quality, add ‘whom He also named apostles’, presumably imported from Luke 6:13, to be followed by NIV, LB, TEV, etc.  that they might be with Him and that He might send them out to preach ¹⁵ —also to have authority to heal sicknesses and  *Perhaps 1% of the Greek manuscripts, of objectively inferior quality, omit ‘to heal diseases and’, to be followed by NIV, NASB, LB, TEV, etc.  to cast out demons: ¹⁶ namely Peter (a name He gave to Simon); ¹⁷ James son of Zebedee, and John the brother of James (and a name He gave to them was Boanerges, that is, ‘Sons of thunder’); ¹⁸ Andrew, Phillip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James son of Alphaeus, Thaddaeus, Simon the Cananite; ¹⁹ and Judas Iscariot, who also betrayed Him. ²⁰ Then they went into a house;  *This may well have been His own house in Capernaum. If He were in someone else’s house, the hosts could have protected Him so He could at least eat.  and again a multitude gathered, so that they were not even able to eat bread. ²¹ Well upon hearing this His family came to apprehend Him, because they were saying, “He is out of his mind!”   PCF: When we find an addition to the Greek NT text, it is often where a copyist added something found in one Gospel and put that into the Gospel he was copying. The words ‘whom he named apostles’ was added to Mark by a copyist who liked those words in Luke’s Gospel. It is quite interesting to me that so many translations of the last century followed that addition, including those Pickering listed plus others like NLT, NET and ESV. The KJV does not contain those words. As a Bible translator, we often are tempted to do the same thing, shoring up the differences between Gospels. But it is better to allow each Gospel to stand on its own. Then in verse 15, we have another thing left out of most translations. The phrase ‘to heal diseases’ is in the ones Pickering mentioned, plus left out of the ESV, NLT, and NET. The KJV contains the words. This omission has the support of only 1% of Greek manuscripts, and the Bible translations of the last century don’t even bother to footnote this variant.  There is a tiny textual variant that Pickering does not footnote. That is in v.18, the spelling of Simon’s designation as ‘the zealot’. The Greek word most often translated as ‘zealot’ is Kananaios (Καναναῖος) in the Eclectic Text, whereas the Majority Text has Kananités (Κανανίτης). 99% of Greek manuscripts have the spelling as in the Majority Text. So, both texts have the same word, but in the ET it is in the nominative form, and it is accusative in the MT. In either form, it can be translated as zealot (meaning a man wanting Israel to rebel against Roman rule) or as Pickering translates, a Cananite, (someone descended from the Cananite people). Either meaning would have been an epithet.   Scribes blaspheme the Holy Spirit Then some scribes who had come down from Jerusalem  *They had come all the way to Galilee, just to combat Jesus.  started saying, “He has Beelzebub”, and “It is by the ruler of the demons that he casts out demons”. ²³ So summoning them He started saying to them in parables: “How can Satan cast out Satan? ²⁴ If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. ²⁵ And if a household is divided against itself, that household cannot stand. ²⁶ And if Satan has risen up against himself and become divided, [his kingdom//he] cannot stand, but is finished. ²⁷ No one can plunder the strong man’s goods,  *Since the definite article occurs with ‘strong man’ the first time the phrase occurs, the entity has already been introduced, so the reference is to Satan. Here is a biblical basis for binding Satan, which is now possible because of Christ’s victory. Hebrews 2:14 informs us that Jehovah the Son took on human form to destroy the devil, while 1 John 3:8 affirms that He was manifested to undo the works of the devil. But in John 20:21 the resurrected Jesus said, “As the Father has sent me, so send I you”, and not long after that He returned to the Father. He defeated Satan alright, but it is up to us to ‘undo the works’.  invading his house, unless he first binds the strong man—then he may plunder the house. ²⁸ “Assuredly I say to you: all the sins of the sons of men can be forgiven, including whatever blasphemies they may utter; ²⁹ but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness, but is subject to eternal condemnation”  *Perhaps 1% of the Greek manuscripts, of objectively inferior quality, read ‘sin’ instead of ‘condemnation’, to be followed by NIV, NASB, LB, TEV, etc. ³⁰ —because they were saying, “He has an unclean spirit”.  *Those scribes committed the unpardonable sin.   PCF: There are some footnotes from Pickering that I will not read. And there are two places in today’s reading where I have tweaked Pi

Warm greetings to all of you who often or sometimes listen to my podcasts. Welcome to this first update for this year. Here are some of the things I have been doing in my Bible-reading hobby recently: I always want to follow the Digging Deeper Daily Reading plan in some form. I’m still not tired of it, and I want to up-to-speed when people comment about it. So this year I’m following my original Digging Deeper Daily YouVersion reading plan with 9 people sharing in the group with me. I have never met any of them personally, but two of them are long-time long-distance friends and prayer partners who have shared many times with me by email. I listen to the 3D plan using the dedicated Android app for the podcast. If you are an Android user, I recommend that app, but it’s not easy to find in the Play Store. Search for this complete string: daily bible reading phil fields. Even being so specific, the app currently comes in third in the search results! I am using that app to listen one day ahead of everyone that started the plan on January 1st. I want to be a day ahead so that I can catch mistakes. My original recordings contain a few mistakes, and I have fixed a few of them. However, as I follow along in the NLT, I have found that many times the differences in the NLT text compared to my recordings is due to my having used an older edition of the NLT rather than newer ones. Newer editions were released in 2007 and 2015.  While I keep checking off the days in my YouVersion Digging Deeper Daily reading plan, I am actually not reading daily in that app. This year I am using the MyBible reading app. The MyBible app is one of two that I know of that includes the 3D reading plan, and I find it very quick to navigate to the different readings each day. (The other app that includes the 3D reading plan is QuickBibles. QuickBibles is only for Android devices, while MyBible has both Android and Apple apps.) If any of you are interested in checking out the MyBible app, I hope these two observations may be helpful: I value the MyBible app because it allows me to also see the Biblical source texts and get definitions and grammatical parsing of every word. It takes a little time to set up the MyBible app to put all the plethora of features to work for you. For instance, to quickly access the reading plan button, you will need to use the settings and place that button in the header bar.    The other thing that I have been spending a little time on is improving the audio recordings for the second semester of the Read To Me Daily YouVersion reading plan. I will finish that in just a couple of days, so the better recordings will be ready for any of you currently/ following the first semester of the RTMD plan now. I have a new podcast series that some of you would have noticed. I have released three episodes of the EveryWord podcast. This is a podcast series for those who enjoy studying details found in God’s Word. In every episode I will read from Dr. Wilbur Pickering’s fresh-sounding translation of the New Testament, to which he gave the name, “The Sovereign Creator Has Spoken.” Dr. Pickering’s translation is based on the Majority Text of the Greek New Testament, which is also called the Byzantine Text. I consider the Majority Text to be superior to the Eclectic Greek Text which was used as the basis of most of the NT translations of the last century. Dr. Pickering’s translation is full of interesting footnotes, which I read and comment on. I hope that beginning soon more high quality Bible translations will be based on the Majority Greek Text rather than the Eclectic Greek Text. To learn more about all this, please see dailybiblereading.info and look for one of the three EveryWord podcasts. Last week, for the first time ever, I got to visit the YouVersion headquarters near Oklahoma City, OK. I was able to meet with three people I have frequently corresponded with, and three others who help to make things happen behind the scenes. The headquarters is a beehive of activity, with more people working in it than it was designed for. I was able to discuss various things with them about the use and promotion of our Plain Indonesian Translation, and various things about my reading plans, which I have submitted in both English and Indonesian. They received me so very warmly, and part of that is because people who are their partners seldom show up to visit them.  One of the things I discussed with them is the Digging Deeper Daily reading plan. Many of you know that that is a 365 day plan. Well, before Christmas I spent several days bringing the daily devotional text up to Youversion’s new guidelines, and giving each day a theme image. But then, all that work somehow got lost in cyberspace. My visit to the YV headquarters confirmed that the edits cannot be retrieved.  If there is anyone out there who has time to do some very exacting copy/pasting into an Excel spreadsheet with 365 rows, please let me know.  In December, I concluded that the stand-alone forum for BibleReaders was not going anywhere, and reluctantly started a new Facebook group. I waited until mid-January to close the BibleReaders forum.  I have appreciated our smaller new Facebook group— the 2020 3D Bible Reading Group— which currently has 129 members. This group will be open for just this year. Next year I will either start a new group, or do something else. The other way to hear news from me is by visiting the ReadThisFirst pages at dailybiblereading.info. Look at the Stay Connected page and sign up for our email updates.  If you have any comments or corrections to anything you hear in my podcasts, my favorite way for you to communicate those things to me is to use the Contact button at the very top of the dailybiblereading.info site. Or if you have already used that button before, just write an email to me using the same address that I used to reply to you. I leave on February 18 for 7 weeks in Indonesia. Here are my prayer requests: There are issues remaining from our consultant checks of Genesis and Exodus that need to be cleared up. Genesis has been particularly difficult for our translation team. Please pray that we can finish those two books. We praise the Lord that the two most popular Bible reading apps in Indonesia are showing not just our Plain Indonesian Translation’s New Testament, but also 4 little books of the Old Testament. Please pray that people will enjoy Ruth, Esther, Ecclesiastes, and Jonah. Please pray that the presence of these books will prompt people to pray for our translation team. It looks like I will be giving about nine presentations in various places in Java and Papua, including fellowship groups, seminaries, prison groups, and even in a Bible school program that is for prison inmates. You may think that I would be OK at speaking because I have a podcast. But I have never been good at public speaking. It doesn’t help that the situations I find myself speaking in are so different. It throws me off if people can’t see the presentation slides I am showing, or if I can’t use the visual aids at all. Please pray for me. Please pray that our non-profit Bible organization in Indonesia will find someone talented who would like to take on a ministry of communication, handling our website and social media promotions.  Please pray for my health. I have had dizzy spells recently. We agree with our doctor’s treatment, and this is probably just something temporary. But all the same, please pray for me. It is exciting that we have 29 people in an online course that our organization is offering about how to understand and use different Bible translations. Please pray that this will be part of sharing the news about how our NT translation supports and complements the main Indonesian Bible. The two translations, and others out there, are not at odds, but give people better ways to get the full meaning of God’s Word. One social media post by one of the people in that class said that 70% of Christians in Indonesia are not interested in reading the Bible. The person said, “We need a Bible that young people enjoy reading.” Well, that’s what we are making, and the NT is published. But Indonesian people need to hear about it. Please pray that people who have lost interest in Bible reading will give our translation a try. And that people in rural areas who struggle to understand the default Bible translation will find out that there is an understandable alternative. I talk to Gale every day when I am gone. Please pray for Gale in managing the pain and mental fuzziness that is part of her chronic condition.

EveryWord003 Mark 2   Welcome to this THIRD podcast in a series that I am calling the Every Word Podcast. This is a podcast series for those who enjoy studying details found in God’s Word. In every episode I will read from Dr. Wilbur Pickering’s fresh-sounding translation of the New Testament, to which he gave the name, “The Sovereign God Has Spoken.” In today’s episode, I will read and comment on Pickering’s translation of Mark chapter 2.   Please bear in mind that the episode notes for all of my podcasts provide the text of everything I’m saying and links to supporting documentation.   Dr. Pickering’s translation is based on the Majority Text of the Greek New Testament, which is also called the Byzantine Text. I consider the Majority Text to be superior to the Eclectic Greek Text** which was used as the basis of most of the NT translations of the last century.  **Footnote: The Eclectic Text is also called the Critical Text, the Nestle-Aland text, and the United Bible Societies (UBS) Text. The succeeding editions of the Eclectic Text have primarily followed Wescott and Hort, while the apparatus (or footnotes) dealing with textual variations has grown significantly to show details about textual variants found among Alexandrian manuscripts.   The shift in the Greek text used for our Bible translations began around 1881, with the publication of Wescott and Hort’s Greek New Testament, which was based on an extremely small sampling of manuscripts of the Alexandrian Text Type*— that is from Egypt.  *Footnote: The two are Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus. These are dated at 3_3_0—3_6_0 AD and 3_0_0—3_2_5 respectively. At the time Wescott and Hort were working, it was anticipated that research into newly discovered ancient New manuscripts from Egypt would reveal a coherent textual stream that would point to the authentic initial form of the Greek text. Now, over a century later, those ancient Egyptian papyrus manuscripts have been analyzed, but they do not reveal a coherent textual stream that can be followed. Instead the papyri manuscripts reveal that Egyptian scribes very freely edited the texts they copied. In contrast, the Majority Text of the New Testament was made by copyists who lived in the same places as the original recipients of the apostles’ writings. Individual scribal errors have been weeded out, since this text type is based on the majority reading of thousands of Greek manuscripts.   The Majority Text has been stable over the centuries and is the best academically defendable text of the Greek New Testament that we have today. It is my hope that these podcasts will build awareness of the faulty Greek text that underlies almost all of the English Bible translations of the last century, starting with the ASV (1901), and including RSV, NASB, NIV, GNT, NLT, NET, and ESV.   It is high time (now that I’ve reached the 3rd podcast) that I admit to you that— although I have worked as a Bible translator for most of my life— I am a new-comer to the whole study of textual criticism. In my article Playing Follow-the-Leader in Bible Translation, I speak about how little missionary Bible translators of my generation were trained in the area of textual criticism. I— unlike many of my colleagues— did not have the benefit of seminary education. My degrees are in the field of music. But from what I have heard from my seminary-trained colleagues, there is not much taught to normal seminary students about textual criticism. Few pastors today know anything about the subject.   It was in April of 2018 that I had the opportunity to visit Timothy and Barbara Friberg in Indonesia. Four years prior to this my team and I had published the Plain Indonesian NT. Dr. Timothy Friberg is famous for compiling the Analytical Greek New Testament, which is a reference work that virtually all Bible translators use. (Incidentally the AGNT is now being released in a new and improved edition.) I sought Dr. Fribergs advice because of his experience translating the NT for Muslim background audiences, because I am a consultant for such a project. During my two-day visit, I received excellent advice, but also received a bonus I didn’t expect. Tim Friberg convinced me that the Majority Greek Text should be used in translating the New Testament for Muslim background believers.    But then he asked, “Well, what about your Plain Indonesian New Testament? Are you going to revise that to follow the Majority Text?” This was a hard question for me because that NT was already published. I had just played follow-the-leader in basing that translation on the Eclectic text. After some thought and prayer, I concluded that God would be most glorified if my translation team and I  revised our published New Testament to follow the Majority Text. The revisions are now about 75% complete. Please pray for us in this: Please pray that we will work carefully so that we do not make mistakes as we revise the Plain Indonesian New Testament. Please pray that Bible readers in Indonesia would be happy to have a translation following the Majority Text, even though that will make our translation different from the default Indonesian Bible. Being aware that the United Bible Society publishes the Eclectic Greek Text, please pray that the Indonesian Bible Society or other parties will not publicly criticize our move to the Majority Text.    As I admitted above, I do not have training in the field of textual criticism. Because of that, I am sure that I have already made mistakes in these EveryWord podcasts. If you find errors in my statements, feel free to use the contact button at dailybiblereading.info to send your input to me.    Mark 2  Pickering’s footnotes are indented and italicized in the PDF attached to this podcast. Find EveryWord003 at dailybiblereading.info and use the red Download PDF button to get it. A paralytic— the evaluation ¹ Well a few days later, He again entered Capernaum, and it was heard that He was at home. ² Without delay so many were gathered together that there was no more room, not even around the door, and He was speaking the Word to them. ³ Then four men came, carrying a paralytic to Him. ⁴ And not being able to get near Him because of the crowd, they removed the roof where He was;  The roof was presumably flat, with an outside staircase leading up to it. I suppose damaging someone else’s roof could be considered a crime, but they were determined. If Jesus was in His own house, there would be no problem.  upon breaking through they lowered the pallet on which the paralytic was lying. ⁵ So seeing their faith Jesus says to the paralytic, “Son, your sins are forgiven you”. ⁶ Now some of the scribes were sitting there, and reasoning in their hearts: ⁷ “Why does this guy speak blasphemies like that? Who can forgive sins but God alone?” ⁸ Immediately Jesus perceived in His spirit what they were reasoning within themselves  *Time and again the Inspired Record will point out that Jesus could read people’s thoughts. and said to them: “Why are you reasoning these things in your hearts? ⁹ Which is easier:  *I suppose the point to be that the first is easier to say, because no one can see whether it happened or not. But if you tell a paralytic to get up and he doesn’t, you get egg on the face. The Lord did it that way to help them believe that He could really forgive sin. There was nothing wrong with the scribes’ inference; indeed only God can forgive sin, so in fact Jesus was claiming to be God!  to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins have been forgiven’, or to say, ‘Get up, pick up your pallet and start walking!’? ¹⁰ But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on the earth to forgive sins” —He says to the paralytic: ¹¹ “To you I say, get up, pick up your pallet and go to your house!” ¹² So forthwith he got up, picked up his pallet and went out in front of them all; so that all were amazed and glorified God, saying, “We never saw anything like this!”  Quite right; they never had!   PCF: I agree heartily with Pickering’s footnote on v. 8. I think especially of the Gospel of John that repeatedly shows that Jesus could read people’s thoughts.   I do not agree with Pickering’s first sentence about ‘which is easier to say’. The idea he supports is that it would be easier to forgive sins because no one could tell if it happened. But even he seems a bit doubtful about saying that, because his sentence starts with, “I suppose the point to be …”  Yes, the interpretation he gives— that forgiving the man’s sins would be the easier to say— can be found in some commentaries. But that is worldly thinking. Jesus would have known that saying ‘I forgive your sins’ would mean that He would pay for those sins on the cross.    But Pickering is right in the last part of that footnote. Only God can forgive sin, so the scribes’ inference was right. He might as well as said, ‘I am God’.   There is interesting linguistic support for only God being able to forgive sins. In the Orya language of Papua, Indonesia, and in many other languages, ordinary persons cannot ‘forgive’ someone else’s wrongs or sins. The word  the Orya language uses for forgiving on a person-to-person level is simply to ‘forget’. You can choose to ‘forget’ a sin someone commits against you. But the real word for ‘forgive’ in Orya means to ‘finish’ or ‘nullify’ the sin. Only God can finish all the liabilities of a sin or nullify the consequences. So the scribes were right that it takes an action of God to have one’s sins forgiven. Matthew called ¹³ Then He went out again by the sea; and the whole crowd came to Him, and He began to teach them. ¹⁴ As He passed by, He saw Levi the son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax office, and He said to him, “Follow me”. So he got up and followed Him. ¹⁵ Now it happened, as He was reclining at the table in his house,  Matthew’s—he evidently put on a big dinner and invited all his associates.  that many tax collectors and sinners  ‘Tax collectors and sinners’ seems to

The regular GN-Day26 podcast has now been corrected with the correct file. Sorry for the mistake!

Welcome to this SECOND podcast in a series that I am calling the Every Word Podcast. This is a podcast series for those who enjoy studying details found in God’s Word. In every episode I will read from Dr. Wilbur Pickering’s fresh-sounding translation of the  New Testament. The NT was named, “The Sovereign God Has Spoken,” and I will read from the 2016 2nd edition. In today’s episode, I will read and comment on Pickering’s translation of Mark 1:29-45. This is the kind of podcast where it might be better to look at the episode notes while listening. If you are flying down the freeway right now, just bear it in mind that you may want to check this out later. With a few exceptions that I will discuss today, Dr. Pickering’s translation is based on the Majority Text of the Greek New Testament, which is also called the Byzantine Text. I consider the Majority Text to be superior to the Eclectic Greek Text which was used as the basis of most of the NT translations of the last century. The shift in the Greek text used for our Bible translations began around 1881, with the publication of Wescott and Hort’s Greek New Testament, which was based on an extremely small sampling of manuscripts of the Alexandrian Text Type*— that is from Egypt.  *Footnote: The two are Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus. These are dated at 3_3_0—3_6_0 AD and 3_0_0—3_2_5 respectively. At the time Wescott and Hort were working, it was anticipated that research into newly discovered ancient New manuscripts from Egypt would reveal a coherent textual stream that would point to the authentic initial form of the Greek text. Now, over a century later, those ancient Egyptian papyrus manuscripts have been analyzed, but they do not reveal a coherent textual stream that can be followed. Instead the papyri manuscripts reveal that Egyptian scribes very freely edited the texts they copied. In contrast, the Majority Text of the New Testament was made by copyists who lived in the same places as the original recipients of the apostles’ writings. Individual scribal errors have been weeded out, since this text type is based on the majority reading of thousands of Greek manuscripts. The Majority Text has been stable over the centuries and is the best academically defendable text of the Greek New Testament that we have today. In this podcast, I am trying in a small way to undo the damage caused by Wescott and Hort’s Greek New Testament, which passed a legacy of mistakes down to all succeeding editions of the Eclectic/Critical Greek Text.** The damage I speak of can be found in almost all of the English Bible translations of the last century, starting with the ASV (1901), and including RSV, NASB, NIV, GNT, NLT, NET, and ESV. **Footnote: The Eclectic Text is also called the Critical Text, the Nestle-Aland text, and the United Bible Societies (UBS) Text. The succeeding editions of the Eclectic Text have primarily followed Wescott and Hort, while the apparatus (or footnotes) dealing with textual variations has grown significantly to show details about textual variants found among Alexandrian manuscripts. You may ask, “How can I find the damage that you speak of in my Bible?” The quick answer is to examine the footnotes found in the New Testament. Then check out what Pickering has to say in his NT translation.    Mar 1:29-45: Pickering’s footnotes are indented and italicized. Peter’s mother-in-law  29 Immediately upon exiting the synagogue they went into the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John.  30 Simon’s mother-in-law was lying down with a fever, so without delay they told Him about her.  *WP footnote: The parallel passage in Luke 4:37 specifies that it was a high fever—she was burning. 31 So He went and grasping her hand lifted her up; immediately the fever left her and she began to serve them.  *WP footnote: A high fever usually leaves a person weak, even after it passes, so we really have a double miracle here: Jesus dismissed the fever, but also reversed its effect.  Many healings  32 That evening, when the sun had set, they started bringing to Him all who were sick and the demonized. 33 So much so that the whole town was gathered at the door, 34 and He healed many who were sick with various diseases and cast out many demons; and He did not allow the demons to speak, because they knew He was Messiah.  *WP footnote: I here follow some 40% of the Greek manuscripts, including the best line of transmission; most versions omit “He was Messiah”.  Alone to pray  35 Now very early, still night, He got up, slipped out, and went off to a solitary place, where He was praying. 36 Simon and those with him hunted for Him, 37 and upon finding Him they said to Him, “Everyone is looking for you”. 38 But He said to them: “Let us go to the neighboring towns, so I can preach there also; that is why I have come.”  *WP footnote: I here follow some 40% of the Greek manuscripts, including the best line of transmission; most versions have ‘come forth’, presumably referring to why He had slipped out of town. 39 He was constantly preaching in their synagogues throughout all Galilee, and also casting out demons.  The hinge—proof, evaluation, rejection, blasphemy A leper—the proof  40 A leper came to Him, imploring Him, kneeling before Him and saying to Him, “If you want to, you are able to cleanse me”. 41 So being moved with compassion, Jesus stretched out His hand and touched him,  *WP footnote: Wow! In those days, no one would touch a leper, because of contamination. Notice that Jesus agreed with the leper: “I want to; be cleansed!” Beautiful!  and said to him: “I want to; be cleansed!” 42 And when He said this, immediately the leprosy left him, and he was cleansed. 43 And He sent him away at once, sternly warning him, 44 by saying: “See that you say nothing to anyone; but go, show yourself to the priest and offer for your cleansing the things that Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.”  *WP footnote: This would be the first case the priest had ever had of evaluating a cleansed leper, because only the Messiah could cure leprosy. By instructing the cleansed leper in this way, Jesus was serving notice to the priests that the Messiah had come. 45 However he [the leper] went out and began to proclaim it freely, spreading the news,  But he did go to the priest, which resulted in the following evaluation—Luke makes this point clearly in his parallel account. That said, however, I can sympathize with that leper—he had good reason to sound off! But it did increase the pressure on Jesus. so that He [Jesus] was no longer able to enter a town openly, but remained outside in deserted places; yet [people//they] kept coming to Him from all over.  *WP footnote: There were an awful lot of sick people who all of a sudden had hope.   My comments: Before commenting on two textual variants footnoted by Pickering in the portion I just read, I would like to go back to the first episode to verse 1, and the variant that I pointed out at the end of the verse: 1 A beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, Son of God! Pickering has a footnote that says, “There is no definite article with ‘Son’, which in this case emphasizes the inherent quality of the noun.” So Pickering makes this comment about his translation, not about a textual variant. He says that in Greek, ‘Son of God’ has no article before it. In other words, Greek doesn’t say, ‘the Son of God’. His comment may be right that in Greek, the absence of an article gives emphasis. Unfortunately, English doesn’t work that way, and not using the article ‘the’ before ‘Son of God’ makes the sentence sound odd to me, and an odd-sounding sentence doesn’t give me a feeling of emphasis. Pickering also leaves out a ‘the’ in a similar place is verse 34, and to me his translation sounds odd there too. (“and He did not allow the demons to speak, because they knew He was Messiah.”) So here’s a little translational principle for free from me: Forcing an English translation to follow the Greek in tiny little grammatical things often doesn’t work very well. It just makes the translation sound odd, and perhaps alert the reader to look at the footnote. To add emphasis in English, we may need to add a word or two, or switch around the order of the words. But I mentioned in the last episode that there is a variant that Pickering didn’t mention. To be complete I should have said that Wescott & Hort’s Greek text include ‘Son of God’ in brackets. The brackets indicate that they had some doubts that the words were in the original text, but decided to keep not erase the words in the text. Most of the time W&H were bolder in their choice of variants, and the mention of them was relegated to the footnotes.  W&H started a giant game of follow-the-leader in such things. Succeeding editions of the Eclectic Greek NT followed W&H in similarly casting doubt about the authenticity of those three Greek words in Mark 1:1 by putting them in brackets. And now finally the popular SBL Greek Text* totally deletes the words. As I said in the last episode, 98.4% of ancient Greek manuscripts have those words. *Footnote: The Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) is jointly published in partnership with Logos Bible Software. Thankfully, the translators of nearly all of the Bible versions of the last century decided to include the bracketed words, ‘the Son of God’ in Mark 1:1. That is probably why Pickering didn’t mention that variant. So why am I even bringing all this up? Because I want to point out a rather interesting thing about Bible translation in the last century. Since W&H and the ASV of 1901, modern Bible translators have inherited the extra responsibility to choose whether or not to include words in brackets in the Greek text in their translation. You might think that diligent translators would carefully research each variant when brackets appeared in the text. But I have shown in my article entitled, “Playing follow-the-leader in Bible translation” that most Bible translators simply