Stephen K. Ray's Blog, page 70

“Yes I Can!” Disabilities don’t hold these folks down – quite amazing

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The Protestant and his Three Huts

The Protestant’s Three Huts

A Protestant was stranded all alone on an island. He begins sending smoke signals, hoping that somebody will find him.

Ten years pass, and a boat is sailing by. The captain notices the smoke signals, and decides to pull into the island. When he docks, he sees three huts.

The Protestant runs out and embraces the captain, and says, “Thank you for rescuing me!” The captain says, “No problem, where are the others?”

The man says, “There is only me, I am all alone on this island.” The captain, confused, asks, “If you are all alone, then why are there three huts?”

The man says, “Well, the first hut is where I live, that’s my home. The second hut is my church, where I worship.”

The captain asks, “And what is the third hut?” The man says, “Oh, that’s the church where I used to go to.”

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St. Augustine and St. Paul on Real Bishops

“No man can be a good bishop if he loves his title but not his task.”  St. Augustine

May God grant us good Shepherd‘s. May he grant us those willing to be politically-incorrect, willing to be honest with their flock, exposing heresy and sin even if it’s among their own bishops and priests — even if it causes them grief, ostracization and discomfort.

Where are the Shepherds that lay down their lives for the sheep? Where are the shepherds ready stop being politicians and ready to be martyrs?

 If they do, they will be amazed at the loyalty, love and devotion the sheep will show them. The sheep will follow such shepherds anywhere!

God bless all the marvelous bishops that grace our Church.  I know many of them and I love them dearly. They already heed the words of St. Paul. But there are others who need to take heed…

Acts 20:28–30  “Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood. I know that after my departure savage wolves will come in among you, not sparing the flock and from among your own selves men will arise, speaking [and doing] perverse things, to draw away the disciples after them.”

Venerable Fulton J. Sheen     “Who is going to save our Church? Not our bishops, not our priests and religious. It is up to you, the people. You have the minds, the eyes, and the ears to save the Church. Your mission is to see that your priests act like priests, your bishops act like bishops.”

Please Shepherds…

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Grandson Josh’s Piano Christmas Carol Mash-up, Wow!

My grandson Joshua Ray, just arrived home for Christmas from Ave Maria University in Florida. He went to a church group party and sat down at the piano and — WOW!

He’s just winging this on the fly with no music. He improvises. I don’t know where he got these talents — they sure didn’t come from us This was a gift infused by God.

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Mary and the Trinity

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Yikes! Never had a Flight like this in 20 Years…

Never had a flight like this in 20 years and I’m almost a 3 million-miler on Delta and so is my wife. Here are the texts I sent to the organizer of my speaking events this weekend:

“We are on the plane, waiting to fly to Phoenix. The first plane had problems so they had to bring in a new and smaller plane. Once that confusion was resolved, and we were all boarded, they had computer troubles, and it took them an hour to get it fixed.

“Then somebody started smoking in the restroom in the back and it set off the alarm which caused another delay with the system and they had to remove the smoker.

“But now the pilots are beyond their timeframe and can’t fly the plane. They are trying to find new pilots to fly the plane. I am assuming and hoping and praying will be all right. I’ll keep you updated.

“It’s a good thing we planned an early departure which gives us some cushion. But I wanted to let you know the situation ahead of time. IF WORST COMES TO WORST, I will happily give both talks tomorrow. At this point, they seem confident we will fly. More soon…”

Then,

Now we are waiting for new pilots to arrive, and a family brought a sick baby on the plane. There was a conflict in the back and another family with a baby got off because they didn’t want their baby to get sick sitting next to the sick baby. Who knows how that’s going to play out now. The sick family was allowed to stay on the plane!

The elderly couple next to us has a dog they say can only go 4 hours. We’ve already been on the plane 2 hours and the flight ahead is 4.5 hours.

Never been in such a dramatic flight in my life and we haven’t even left the ground yet

Then,

The ground crew left and now we have to wait for a new crew… We finally flew but with a very bumping first hour  “Stay in your seats with seat belts!”

I have flown over 2,000,000 miles with Delta and my wife also. We fly roughly 150,000 to 250,000 miles a year for the last 20 years. We have NEVER had a flight like this EVER! You are correct, someone could make a movie of what happened on this plane today. It will make a marvelous introduction for my talk tonight

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Fed Ex just left with final edit of my Commentary on Genesis – Excited!

After five years of work and research and writing, the final edit on my Catholic Commentary on Genesis is on its way back to Ignatius Press.

The plan is that the book will be printed in January and published and ready for sale by April. They say the supply line may slow it down, but in any case, I am very excited. This has been a huge project that my wife and I have worked on for many years.

I don’t think there are any current, recent Catholic commentaries on the book of Genesis, the 2nd longest book of the Bible.

This book is full of biblical background, quotes from the Fathers of the Church, Jewish rabbis and scholars, and full of apologetics and typology. Jesus said the whole Law and the Prophets was about him, and Genesis is rich with prefigurations of Christ and the Church.

So I hope, and pray that the Lord uses this book for his glory.

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Are our Bibles Reliable?

I was recently asked a question about the reliability of scripture, and I provided a simple answer.

Hi Steve,I have someone who has questioned how we can believe that what is written in the Bible today (obviously Catholic Bible), is the true copy of the sacred scriptures that was written 2,000 years ago? How do we know that after 2,000 years, we don’t have something now that is unreliable and is not what was actually written by the original writers of the New Testament (and even the Old Testament).        I explained how Christ gave His word that basically the Church would never lead anyone into error or false teachings/beliefs and that Church (the Catholic Church) declares to the word that it is the Word of God and nothing less, because Christ said so.      But I need some historical evidence that shows that the Douay – Rheims or Revised RSV is as close to the original Greek as possible and show how we can know that the Bible didn’t get changed at all.Do you have any sources or books that shows any of this? I know the actual original copies that the original writers wrote are lost.Thank you very much and may God Bless!

Happy Advent!!

Dear Friend. Steve Ray here …

Yes, the Holy Spirit has protected scripture through the ages. But we do not need to depend upon that only because the translation and copying and preservation of scripture is also very scientific.Once at my Bible study, we put a poem up on the wall and we made the group copy the poem, but they had to make at least two mistakes. We had a translating committee at five people in another room, who never saw the original poem. We gave them the 45 flawed copies, and after they studied and analyzed them, they did their best to reconstruct what the original Palm said from all of the 45 flawed copies.When they came out with the poem and showed it to the group, it was 100% accurate.This is how Scripture has been handed down. We do not have the original manuscripts of Matthew, Mark Luke, but we do have thousands of fragments and copies in our possession. The documents of scripture, all the New Testament and the Old, are better arrested to than any other ancient writings.When the translators look at all of those ancient documents from the first centuries, and compare them all, just like a poem that was flawed, they can restructure what the new testament was with 99.99% accuracy.Anyone who doubts the accuracy of the New Testament, and that includes the old as well, has never studied the issue and is just parroting things they’ve heard from others.. very foolish and ignorant indeed.

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Pray for my grandson Damian who may be losing his eyesight

Damian is a marvelous and very holy young man considering the priesthood. You will never find a more lovely, talented, fun, caring, athletic and thoroughly Catholic young man.

From my daughter Cindy

Please pray for my son Damian. He has a blind spot in the center of his vision in his left eye. This is the novena that we are asking people to pray for Damian’s eyes, for the return of his full central vision in his left eye, and for a clear diagnosis and wisdom for all the doctors, we will be seeing this week.If you start the novena today then it will end on the Feast of St. Lucy (patroness of vision), and also my birthday! https://novenaprayer.com/2021/12/04/st-lucy-novena-prayer/Thank you so much for praying with us!~CindyIf you haven’t heard any details yet, here is a short summary:Damian had trouble with internal bleeding and inflammation in his left eye back in August, as many of you know, and they thought they knew the issue, but last Tuesday he noticed a partial loss of vision (which he didn’t tell us about until late that night), and we got him in as soon as possible last week on Wednesday. They can now see that the problem is progressing, so it’s not fundamentally trauma-caused after all (though there may be that, too).They’re pretty sure it’s a rare condition (serpiginous choroiditis) that is either caused by TB or is auto-immune. They ran a whole panoply of tests last Sept, and the TB test was negative, so it looks like this is the auto-immune version. The doctors are pretty concerned because the inflammation is encroaching on the center of his vision area (fovea).They gave him a steroid injection into his eye, and he’s on oral steroids now, too. We are meeting with an auto-immune specialist on Friday and with a couple of other doctors as well. This condition may progress and cause damage to his vision in both eyes, so we are praying hard that that doesn’t happen!

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Are Verses Left Out of Modern Translations of the Bible?

Bible Verses Missing in Modern Translations?
By Steve Ray       (PDF version here)

There are a lot of people today that are what we call “King James only“ Christians. They believe that the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible is the only inspired version and that modern translations are modernist. One argument for this is that there are some verses contained in the KJV which are not in recent modern versions.

The argument of KJV-only adherents only betrays their ignorance of the process of inspiration, transmission and translation. We sometimes joked that, “If the KJV was good enough for St. Paul, it is good enough for me.”

Examples of missing verses and passages are Mark 16:9–20, John 5:4, Acts 8:37, and 1 John 5:7.

We don’t have any of the original writings of the documents in the New Testament, only copies and copies of copies. There are thousands of fragments and manuscripts from the early centuries. The earliest is called the John Ryland fragment which contains a small portion of John 17 and 18. It is dated at AD 125 and was found in the sands of Egypt and written of papyrus.

The more ancient the manuscripts the more likely they are to be accurate to what the apostles actually wrote. And the more ancient manuscripts found to compare and analyze, the more accurate the translation will be.

The KJV was translated in 1611 by Protestant King James of England and was translated when we were still devoid of the best and most ancient manuscripts that testify to the original writings of the apostles. Over the last 400 years since the translation of the KJV there have been many newly discovered ancient and more reliable manuscripts.

Modern scholarship uses the most authoritative and trustworthy manuscripts to update the text of Scripture to make it much more accurate to what the apostles actually wrote. These manuscripts were not available during the translations of the KJV.

So, it was discovered there were some verses added by copyists over the centuries so King James had these later interpolations included in his translation.

But modern translations do not include them as part of the text, because they were not part of the original texts. But, even though modern translators know that those verses are not in the original Greek text, they still often add them in brackets with comments like: “Early mss [manuscripts] do not contain this v [verse].” This note is from the New American Standard Bible which is the translation I was raised with in my middle years along with the KJV.

Commenting on the later interpolation, the NIV footnote adds, “Some less important manuscripts [add]…”  The Catholic New American Bible, used for Mass in the US, footnotes, “Toward the end of the second century in the West and among the fourth-century Greek Fathers, an additional verse was known… This verse is missing from all early Greek manuscripts and the earliest versions, including the original Vulgate. Its vocabulary is markedly non-Johannine.”

Anybody who claims that those verses are definitely part of the original writings — and that Bibles that don’t include them are modernist and in error — only show their ignorance and the whole process of inspiration, transmission, translation and hermeneutics. For more on this check this Protestant but very good source: Why Are Newer Translations of the Bible Missing Verses?

You may also appreciate my article What Translation of the Bible Should you Use?

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