Misconceptions About the Bible's Red Letters

Kymberli Cook: 

Welcome to The Table Podcast where we discuss issues of God and culture to show the relevance of theology to everyday life. My name is Kymberli Cook and I'm the Assistant Director at the Hendricks Center. And today we are going to be talking about misconceptions about the red letters in the Bible. And we are joined by two very qualified gentlemen who've dedicated their lives to the actual text of the Bible, particularly the New Testament. And so we have with us Dr. Mikel Del Rosario, who's a professor of Bible and theology at Moody Bible Institute. And his voice and face will be quite familiar because he is a former Table Podcast host as well. It's nice to have you here, Mikel. 

Mikel Del Rosario: 

Thanks so much for inviting me, Kym. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Absolutely. And we're also joined by Dr. Michael Burer, the dean of faculty and a professor of New Testament here at DTS. So it's nice to have you here as well, Mike. 

Michael Burer: 

Thanks, very glad to be here. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Awesome. Well, thank you again both of you for taking time to sit with us at the table today. And to let our listener get to know each one of you a little bit better, could you just tell us a smidge about yourself and particularly leading to how you ended up dedicating your life and so much time thinking about the text of Scripture and how it is that we interpret it. Mike, let's start with you. 

Michael Burer: 

Sure. I've been at the seminary since 2004 when I graduated with my doctorate, and I've been in the New Testament department since then. And I have just always loved working with the text in the New Testament, the Greek language, the interpretation of it, the syntax, the grammar, all of it. I find it super exciting. So this is a great discussion because I think it gives us a chance to really talk about how we interpret it and especially the words of Jesus, which we all regard as important. So I'm glad to be part of the discussion. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Awesome. Glad to have you. Mikel, what about you? For those who haven't listened to 5,000 podcasts by you or where you're at now? 

Mikel Del Rosario: 

Yeah, I'm at the Moody Bible Institute now. I teach Bible Introduction and New Testament survey as well as Apologetics. And when we talk about apologetics, one of my passions is helping Christians explain their faith with both courage and compassion. And a lot of times when we're sharing our faith, we get tough questions about God, Jesus, and the Bible. And so these 5,000-foot type worldview questions are often more philosophical, but then as you talk to people, you're going to get down into the granular questions about verses in the Bible and questions about the transmission of the text and things like that. So in a way of helping other people to be able to explain their faith, we like to talk about these things in my class. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Awesome. Very cool. And yeah, I knew obviously about your apologetics. I mean you have a YouTube presence as the apologetics guy, and I knew all that, but I forgot how that tied directly to the text and that's how you connect those two. So we're going to turn to the matter at hand, the red letters in the Bible. And I have to tell you gentlemen, that this is coming from a moderately personal experience where in our church we had a situation arise where somebody was talking about the red letters and was saying, "Well, this may or may not actually have been the specific words Jesus said." 

And there was a very strong response amongst many people in the church to that kind of statement. And obviously I had gone through seminary at that point when I heard that. And so I understood a little bit more about how the Bible has been transmitted, how it's been translated and all of those things. And so I thought it would be really helpful to do a podcast to just give a little bit of an overview as to what it is that the red letters are, where they come from and how we should think about them. 

Mike, let's start with you. Can you give us a little bit of a history lesson on how they ended up in our English Bibles? How I open it up and it's red in some places and black in other places? 

Michael Burer: 

Now I have to give a confession first. I did not know the history really. Like you, I had seen them growing up and read a lot of Bibles with them, but didn't really understand the history. So I did a little bit of searching. And Crossway has a great article on their website where they talk about it. It turns out they were the invention of a man named Louis Klopsch. He was a magazine editor, and he came up with the idea and published the first Red Letter New Testament in 1899. So it did not come from Jesus or Paul. Was not there from the very beginning. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Only almost like 120, 130 years old. 

Michael Burer: 

Exactly. And then he published the full Red Letter Bible in 1901. Now what's interesting is this is something I found out I didn't realize. Most of the Bibles that we see that have red letters are only the words of Jesus, but he actually published prophecies that Jesus referred to or citations of his also in red. His goal was for us to be able to see how the Old Testament was affirmed, how the Old Testament and the New Testament are linked, etc. So what we have today is a little bit of a variation still in the main what Klopsch had done, but a slight difference as well, because I don't know of any modern printed Bible that has Old Testament in red, but he did that in his 1901 edition. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Oh, that would be fascinating. Then you see the Messianic lines a little bit easier. 

Michael Burer: 

Exactly, And so his goal was to create a Bible where people could see how the old and the New Testament were linked. And it was quite successful. Within 10 years, three or four other publishers had adopted a similar strategy and that became somewhat the norm. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Interesting. Mikel, would you have anything historically you wanted to add? 

Mikel Del Rosario: 

Well, yeah, just coming from the Moody Bible Institute, this guy Klopsch was actually a good friend of D.L. Moody. And the Crossway article, I saw that as well, mentions he actually helped raise money for the Moody Bible Institute right here in downtown Chicago. And he was also friends with Iris Sankey, this guy who led worship and played Christian music right before Moody's talks. But what's interesting about this Old Testament connection where you have some of the words in the Old Testament in red, is that there's a couple of little-known New Testament manuscripts actually that include red letters, and one of them is a codex, an ancient book called Codex Claremontanus from the sixth century, and it actually uses red ink for Old Testament quotations, which is pretty interesting. 

I don't know if Klopsch knew that, but I think the earliest Bible that we have, if you think about the manuscript tradition in the fourth century, something called Codex Vaticanus has red Greek letters kind of like chapter divisions. So it's really interesting how these texts sometimes have red ink on them. Sometimes it's Old Testament like the Codex Claremontanus, and sometimes it's just for chapter divisions. Like in Vaticanus. 

Michael Burer: 

So perhaps you could- 

Mikel Del Rosario: 

The color of the ink is not inspired. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Yes. 

Michael Burer: 

Well, and you could also say the evidence that Mikel is talking about shows that we have always had an instinct to do something with the text, to make certain parts stand out from very ancient manuscripts to even modern printed editions. And that I think is kind of the basis of the question, what do people think then when they see different colors in the Bible and how does that result for our understanding of the text? 

Kymberli Cook: 

And particularly, I mean even going to historically, the if… Which I believe you all, not if, as it was developed during this time, he was friends with Moody and Sankey, and it was during that time where there was a real emphasis on Bible study and digging in and understanding. And I can really see now the idea of, "No, let's show this Messianic theme all the way through that'll help us understand the Bible better." 

So there all along, like you're saying, Mike, there's been this impulse to understand and do something with the text so that we can help with understanding. And then there's a very clear history and a very clear thread of people who are very serious about the Bible and understanding the Bible in a really very intense way, particularly in that time. 

Michael Burer: 

But I think what we need to acknowledge though is that creates a bit of an effect, kind of like you mentioned in your church there was this issue around them and some people had a response. I remember the very first Bible I received as a new believer, I was a young man, it was a Thompson Chain Reference Bible, and I remember looking through it and leafing through the New Testament in the book of Matthew, and I got to chapter five and it was all in red. And as a young man, I thought, "Wow, these must be really important words. What I was looking at before, maybe not, but these must be really important." And that in nutshell is a little bit of the problem I think we need to address. 

Kymberli Cook: 

I love that. Actually, now that you say that, I had the teen NIV Bible, it was purple and green. For those of you who are in my age demographic, it was the Bible to have at that point, and it was the same where I'd be like, "Oh, they're red." 

So Mikkel, in your opinion, what might be some of the ways that… We've already talked about a little bit how the red markings and that kind of thing could be really helpful for catching attention, understanding, bringing out themes. When might they be misleading or unhelpful or something to be thoughtful about? 

Mikel Del Rosario: 

Yeah. Well, I think one, they are helpful just to see where Jesus is speaking in the text, but it can give some people the impression that what we're getting are the exact words of Jesus in almost every place here where these are the sounds coming out of Jesus' mouth, these are the exact literal, like podcast transcript versions of what Jesus said, when in fact Jesus is most of the time speaking Aramaic, and we're getting a Greek translation of what he's saying in the Gospels, and then we get our English translation from that. 

And so the, in New Testament studies, we talk about this thing called Vox or Verba where we get the very voice of Jesus, which is what we get the most of the time or the very words of Jesus, which we get the very few, I think in certain places where we have the Aramaic preserved, even in the Greek text where he tells the little girl, "Talitha, koum!" Little girl, get up. That was so profound that they, even in the Greek text, have it preserved as, "Talitha, koum!" I think Jesus really said that. But we get the voice of Jesus, we see gist and variation, and that gets some people a little bit uncomfortable because they expect a live stream version of exactly what happened. They expect a podcast transcript version of exactly what Jesus said or else they get a little bit nervous that perhaps we don't really have the teaching of Jesus. 

Michael Burer: 

We could also point to certain places where we're a little bit uncertain, where Jesus's words stop and the narrator's start. John Chapter Three is a famous example of that. 

Kymberli Cook: 

That was my church situation. We were talking about John 3:16. Go ahead. Sorry. 

Michael Burer: 

It's a little unclear from the standpoint of the reader, at least our contemporary reading where Jesus's words stop and the narrator's begin. And so it's just even an interpretive challenge. Which are the words of Jesus and which are the words of the narrator? And we've got to work with that. And the words that are in red are a very important indicator of that. And so it's another aspect of the problem that Mikel is referring to. 

Kymberli Cook: 

So let's sit in this place for just a second. If somebody is hearing this, our listener is hearing this for the first time and saying, "Oh my goodness, I don't think I knew that. I didn't know that those weren't actually the words." You're talking about Vox versus Verba, and I thought it was Verba. How can you all ease the person who's hearing that for the first time, that we should still have confidence in what we're getting as something reliable from God, the revelation that we have understood it to be and that it shouldn't be disarming to us? 

Michael Burer: 

Right. Yeah. There's two or three ways to really dig into that. The first way is to recognize that the gospel authors were people who knew Jesus or were with people who knew Jesus, and we can trust that they got the message right. They were eyewitnesses or they were companions of the eyewitnesses. And so therefore, the record that they gave us is a good, accurate record of what Jesus said. It might not be the exact, as Mikel said earlier, podcast transcription, but it's a accurate rendering of exactly what he said and taught. And so that at the first level gives us confidence because we can trust that they recorded what Jesus was telling us. 

Kymberli Cook: 

For instance, I have worked with Darrell Bock for 11 or 12 years now. I can tell you what he teaches. I can tell you his emphases. Some of that may be word for word, and it may be how I've come to own it and understand it in my mind, but it will be very accurate when I would seek to say, "This is what he was saying, this is what he says, and to what he teaches." It's going to be very close to even verbally what he would say. 

Michael Burer: 

So at the first level, that's the first thing we would encourage people to remember is that even if we're working at a different language, as Mikel already mentioned, we're reading English, but the Gospel authors wrote in Greek, but Jesus taught an Aramaic. So we've got some language translation to work with, but even at that level, they have given us a accurate rendition, rendering, teaching of Jesus, and so that gives us confidence at that level. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Mikel, what would you add as far as comfort for people who might find that destabilizing? 

Mikel Del Rosario: 

Yeah. I'll make a little mention back to what you were talking about with hearing Darrell's teaching a lot. I made this really cool thing called the Wheaties Synopsis that I let my students see where Darrell has this… Readers or viewers will have to go back and watch our Theology at Work episodes where Darrell gives this illustration of think about all that goes into getting a box of Wheaties from the grocery store to your house and all the different giftedness of people. Well, I had a podcast transcript of that, of his verbatim words. Then I, with access to that transcript, wrote a literary version for BibSac. 

Then I submitted it to BibSac and they edited it a little bit and the Wheaties went away, and it just became cereal generically, maybe thinking about for an international audience perhaps that doesn't understand. There's gist and there's variation, but Darrell signed off on that. That's his illustration. He agrees that's a fair assessment or rather an accurate representation of his teaching, even if it's not super precise. Another illustration is when my friend had this son who came over, they were watching Star Wars with my little boy, and there's that one part where C-3P0 says, "I have a new strategy, R2. Let the Wookie win." He turns around and says to my son, "That's so funny. He said ;et Chewbacca win." That was accurate, but not precise because Chewbacca is the Wookie. 

Same thing where we get Jesus at the Caesar of Philippi asking Peter, "Who do the crowds say I am?" Or, "Who do the crowds say the son of man is?" Because Jesus is the son of man. It's the same thing. So there's different ways to say things and the fact that we there's different ways that people report things. The fact that they're not verbatim exact every single time actually increases the probability of their historicity, because if you got 10 people in a room and they just verbatim exactly told you the same story, you would think there are some collusion there. There are different ways that people remember. Some people remember things in very precise ways. Other people remember the meaning more than the exact words. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Would you add anything for comfort? 

Michael Burer: 

Yeah, I think there's a really important teaching that we have in your… We mentioned it sort of in our pre-discussion about inspiration. We have a doctrine of inspiration of what God did when he wrote the Scriptures through us or through the writers of the New Testament. The basic argument is that God used their facilities to write exactly what he wants us to have, and so we can trust that God was involved in that process even with the differences and the summations and things of that nature. A verse that we all can think of in this regard is two Peter 1:21, excuse me, Verse 20 and 21, "No prophecy of Scripture ever comes about by the prophet's own imagination. For no prophecy was ever born of human impulse, rather men carried along by the Holy Spirit spoke from God." So the confidence rests not in our human abilities, but in the Holy Spirit superintending that process. 

Kymberli Cook: 

And typically inspiration is understood not only to be in just the transmission of God's word, but also the preservation. So we can have confidence in the word of God that we now have. Somebody might hear Aramaic to Greek and then to English, and they think, "Oh, well, at least I should get to the Greek." We can actually also have confidence, not that there's… I'm sitting with two Greek scholars. There's a lot of good that comes from looking at the Greek, but we can have confidence in our English translations as well. And part of that confidence comes from our doctrine of inspiration. This is what we believe God's word is, and we believe that he has preserved it amongst his people. 

Michael Burer: 

And that's why we are so intent on understanding the New Testament, working with the ancient manuscripts, making sure that we know what they said because that whole process is part of God at work to make sure that we have his word even today. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Absolutely, absolutely. All right, so that's one way that perhaps the red letters can maybe not be quite as helpful as they were intended initially. Are there any other misconceptions that you all would point out where you'd say… You mentioned when you were looking at your Bible as a teenager or as a young man and saying, "Oh, this must be more important." Can you speak to that a little bit? 

Michael Burer: 

Yeah, it's understandable that we would have that reaction. I'm opening my Bible, there's this beautiful color. These words must be more important, but to argue that one section of Scripture is more important than another goes against the doctrine of inspiration that we talked about. We confess that the Bible is fully inspired, every bit of it, every word of it, and so therefore, the Old Testament passages that maybe are a little confusing are just as inspired and valuable for me as a believer, as the New Testament passages that are clear as a bell. So in any case, if we argue that one section of Scripture is more important than another, we're running afoul of what God did throughout the whole Bible. The New Testament is what we're referring to. So we have to recognize that every part of it is valuable for us, not just the words of Jesus, the words of Paul, the words of Isaiah, the prophet, all of it's valuable. 

Kymberli Cook: 

And it can become a slippery slope if we allow ourselves to start making that. That's part of why we want to hold to the doctrine of inspiration as we're discussing it, because then what starts to happen? Who gets to say which one is more important, and it just gets real messy real fast? 

Michael Burer: 

Yeah. A skeptical response that is similar to a positive response to the red letters is, "Oh, Jesus didn't talk about that, so therefore you're wrong to say that we should do X, Y, or Z as people who are following the Lord." So there's a positive response as to cherish those words, but a negative response would be then to discount others because they're not the words of Jesus. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Mikel, what other misconceptions would you highlight? 

Mikel Del Rosario: 

Yeah, it could also be seen that the words of Jesus or even the New Testament is more inspired than the Old Testament, or that they're not on equal ground in terms of them being God's word. And there's a couple texts that come to mind. First is 2nd Peter 3:16 where it says, "There are some things in them," talking about the writings of Paul, "that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction as they do the other Scriptures." So putting Paul's writings on the same level as God's word in the Old Testament. And then Paul himself writing to Timothy saying, there's one part that says, "You shall not muzzle the ox when it treads out the grain and the laborer deserves his wages." And then we have the Old Testament quotation from Deuteronomy right next to a saying of Jesus. So showing that these two things are seen as authoritative. It's not like Deuteronomy is less inspired or less God's word than Jesus' own saying. 

Michael Burer: 

I love that you mentioned 2nd Peter 3:16 because another great verse to remember is 2nd Timothy 3:16, "Every Scripture is inspired by God." And in context, Paul would've been referring to the Old Testament. Obviously in the process of God working through the New Testament authors, it now involves the New Testament, but that means that every passage is equally valuable to us. 

Kymberli Cook: 

So where might some of these feelings have come from? So I mean, opening up the Bible, seeing the red and thinking, "Oh, this is more important," and perhaps just letting that carry you through life. But it seems like perhaps there have been traditions or teachings, and not… I don't want to say a doctrinal teaching, more the cultural stuff that kind of happens as everybody rubs off on one another, that kind of thing. And so where do you all think it maybe has come about that there are people really thinking, "No," and defending this and being disturbed and that kind of thing. Where does that thread come from, do you all think? 

Michael Burer: 

I think it could possibly be from maybe what you might call personal tradition. For example, I mentioned that this was the first Bible I saw as a young man, so I'm emotionally attached to it. And if many of us are brought up in that tradition specifically, maybe people who were brought up in a KJV tradition, which a lot of KJV Bibles are printed with that, with red letters, then there's an emotional attachment to it. But there's also, in a sense, a larger cultural attachment because these were the words of Jesus. They're words that are important for us to understand. They're his teachings. And so therefore, as our culture became antagonistic towards the things of Christ, then it becomes even more important to hold onto those. So I think there's a bit of a personal history, but also a cultural response that we're wrestling with in this love for the red letters. 

Kymberli Cook: 

It almost becomes a flag on top of the hill that Christians feel like they're defending. 

Michael Burer: 

Yeah, I think that's a fair way to say it. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Mikel, what would you add? 

Mikel Del Rosario: 

Well, there is a sense in which Jesus' words are elevated in the sense that this is the culmination and the fulfillment of all of these Messianic prophecies. And the Old Testament is leading up to Jesus. And I think culturally in certain traditions, we've had liturgical practices that perhaps help us see that, that Jesus really is the fulfillment of the Old Testament. And so his words have that elevated status to them, but it could lead some people to are these more inspired than the Old Testament? But just a couple examples. 

In the Roman Catholic tradition or even in the Anglican tradition, when the gospel reading is read, the reader will go down into where the congregation is to read it. Everybody will stand up and hear the word of the Lord there, and at the end they will say the word of Lord as the words of Jesus are read. In the Eastern Orthodox Church, there's a hierarchy of the way that the words of Jesus are chanted. The gospels are chanted in a very ornate kind of way. Paul's letters less and then very plain chant for the Psalms. There's a book just with the gospels in it that is kept in the holiest place, Paul's letters in the altar, but not the holiest place. So there's this stratification that's seen, but of course, the Eastern Orthodox tradition doesn't make a great distinction between Scripture and tradition as well. 

Kymberli Cook: 

No, but I like what you're bringing out with liturgies because even in perhaps traditions closer to our own liturgies that are created for that, there is… So you're right, there's still usually a place for the words of Jesus or for a reading from the Gospels, that kind of thing, and this idea that, yeah, and it makes sense, and that's what makes this conversation so hard is because it does make sense as to why we emphasize the Gospels, why we emphasize the words of Jesus and the ministry and the life and the work of Jesus. Because it is so pivotal in Salvation story and in Scripture story, it is so important, but we also have to be careful how we walk that line lest we get into some territory that is not good. 

Michael Burer: 

And you could even argue that some churches have sort of a de facto liturgy. Most of my upbringing has been in churches that don't have a particular liturgical practice. But you can ask yourself, "When was the last time I heard a sermon series out of one of the minor prophets of the Old Testament?" Probably it's been a while. And that points to the fact that yes, we do tend to have, shall we say, a preferred set of Scriptures, and that's something that we would argue we want to work against. All of Scripture is valuable, so we need to make sure that we are teaching and preaching and leading people to understand the entirety of the Bible. 

Kymberli Cook: 

I really like that. So in general, how would you gentlemen say we should approach through it? Okay, so we talked about the history. We've talked about some potential potholes along the path in approaching the red letters. So how should a thoughtful Christian approach them? And then we'll get into how we should incorporate it into our, what's the word? Oh, goodness. There it goes. Our communities, that's the poignant word I couldn't find. Communities. How do we incorporate them into our communities in a healthy way? But first, let's just talk about how might we approach them as we're thinking through it in our own study and in our own life? 

Michael Burer: 

I would probably argue that it is appropriate to have a sense of devotion to the words of our Lord. He calls us to obedience. He calls us to not only hear his words, but to do them. So yes, we want to know them and understand them. That's perfectly appropriate for us to do as people who are his disciples. At the same time though, we don't want to do that to the exclusion of anything else. We want to make sure we're understanding what Paul the Apostle wrote, what Peter the Apostle wrote, et cetera. So it is appropriate, I think, to have a sense of reverence for those words, but it can't get to the point where they are somehow, as Mikel has said, more inspired or as I made the point about as a young man, they're more important than something else. So there needs to be a balance in that regard. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Mikel- 

Mikel Del Rosario: 

Yeah. I think… Oh, go ahead. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Well, I was just going to say I feel like the task of apologetics particularly is one that, I don't know, this is my opinion at this point, but when done well is a very pastoral act where it's coming alongside questions and deeply felt questions and doing so with sensitivity and softness. So how do you think we can sensitively and thoughtfully push on some of these misconceptions in our communities and make sure that the good remains, but the misconceptions and the problems that can arise are addressed? How do you think we can do that in a thoughtful manner? 

Mikel Del Rosario: 

Yeah, there is a sense in which we want to honor the words of the Lord. And so for many people, they're drawn to those words, but some people might think, "That's all I need. I don't really need to read the Old Testament, and I don't need to read the epistles. I just need, just give me Jesus." But actually to honor Christ, to understand the profundity of the things he said about himself, actually, we do need the Old Testament to help us understand and have more clarity about things Jesus said about himself. But in terms of coming alongside somebody, I think first we want to ask what can we affirm before what do we need to challenge? 

So let's affirm the place that the person wants to give Jesus and his words and just affirm the honor that they want to give Christ. But then also to say, we're going to miss a lot of the profundity of what Jesus said if we think we can only just read Jesus' words to the exclusion of others or think that that's all we need. A great example of this is in Mark 14, writing a book on this right now actually, on Jesus' divine claim. When Jesus was asked by Caiaphas, "Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?" And he says, "I am. And you will see the son of man seated at the right hand of the power and coming on the clouds of heaven." He's making an allusion to Daniel 7 and Psalm 110, that if you totally miss that, you're not entirely going to understand why the high priest is tearing his robes and saying, "Blasphemy." 

Kymberli Cook: 

Why the commotion? 

Mikel Del Rosario: 

Yeah, why does that make any sense? Well, because he's claiming to be in Daniel's vision. Here's this one like a son of man, a human with transcendent qualities, and he rides the clouds like a deity. His kingdom will be unstoppable and everyone will worship him. And then Psalm 110:1, "Sit at my right hand, the Lord says to my Lord." And people saw that as the ultimate eschatological king. So Jesus is making a divine claim to be the eschatological judge and he has the right to judge Caiaphas and the Council, God's Representatives on earth, and they're like, "And who are you?" But we are going to miss all of that if we say, "I'm just going to read Jesus' words. That's all I need, just give me Jesus." So there's helping them to understand, yes, Jesus' words are important and we should treat them with honor, but let's not forget how the Old Testament actually helps us understand Jesus better. 

Michael Burer: 

Yeah, I think there's several things a local church can do. As I kind of alluded, I do think that pastors ought to preach out of the Old Testament. I think in my own personal habit of teaching, I've tried to teach a New Testament book and Old Testament book and then a topic. And so having some variety that in a pastoral context that allows you to teach out of different sections is great. And then even personally, I have tried to read through the Bible in a year, every year for the last 10 years or so, just as a personal practice. And so I would encourage believers to do that as well, to get exposed to the entirety of the Bible by reading it on a regular basis. 

Now, I'll be very frank, sometimes it's not a year, sometimes it's two, a couple of times it was three. But the point is that I am putting myself under the authority of the entirety of Scripture on a consistent basis and trying to learn the entirety of it. So that'd be my personal recommendation to people that are thinking about how to live this out in a practical way. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Yeah, a practice. So Mikel, I really love what you were saying about, well, obviously the first step is where can I extend a hand essentially and say, "Yeah, we actually probably are in a similar place." And I love the idea of, I guess the worst word to use would be capitalizing on their love for Jesus and on our own love for Jesus, and saying, "Yeah, if we find ourselves really tied to these things, that actually shows a really good thing about you, that shows that you love the Lord and you love the words of the Lord, and that's a beautiful thing. 

And in order to better love him and better understand him, these other pieces are necessary, both the Old Testament for understanding his work and his ministry, but also the New Testament for understanding the implications of everything that happened. And the sequel of, this is everything that happened because of Jesus. And so I love that idea of instead of judging and saying, "Oh, you don't know something. And saying, "No, you love." And that's beautiful, and let's love him better by doing these practices. Just like what you were talking about, Mike. 

And perhaps, I'm going to suggest, perhaps we should go back to how it was originally done in our history lesson. The whole point was actually to point out the themes, and I think that that actually addresses some of the concerns. 

Michael Burer: 

Oh, yeah, no, yeah. I think you're exactly right. 

Kymberli Cook: 

But I'm not a Bible publisher, so I probably can't control that. 

Michael Burer: 

Yeah. Well, and I think one of the reasons that cross-references in your Bible are helpful, where study notes are helpful because they can help you see that connection. So maybe you don't have a red-letter Bible, but you've got things that will help you see the entirety of the canon, how it fits together, and how Jesus is the fulfillment of what was promised. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Yeah. I love it. Well, gentlemen, thank you so much for joining us today and just engaging this little area of the text and particularly a 130-year-old nuance to what the Bible Text has for at least our neighborhood of Christians. And I really appreciate your time, and as always, I try to say this to all my guests, but I really mean it from the bottom of my heart. Thank you for all of the time that you have put into researching and studying these things for the church. 

Michael Burer: 

Well, thank you so much. 

Kymberli Cook: 

It does not go unnoticed. 

Michael Burer: 

Glad to have been here and I appreciate the time. 

Kymberli Cook: 

Thank you, Mikel, for joining us all the way from Chicago. 

Mikel Del Rosario: 

Thanks, Kym. I'm glad to be here. 

Kymberli Cook: 

And thank you, our listener, for being with us. If you like our show, leave a rating or review on your favorite podcast app so that others can discover us, and we hope that you will join us next time when we discuss issues of God and culture to show the relevance of theology for everyday life.