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Conclusion

Language names and classifies things and people in terms of their significance of behavior. If we have not been taught or learned a specific meaning of a word or phrase -- or if we do not have a word or phrase that describes something we have never seen or heard of -- we will not be able to perceive it.

I like to compare this principle to a person who owns a safe but doesn't know the combination. The safe could contain a million dollars, diamonds, a rare book, a deadly poison, or nothing. The owner could be just inches away from the safe's contents, but remain completely unaware.

Millions of readers open the most important book in their lives, read the words, discuss the words, but fail to accurately understand the ancient Sources' messages. The linguistic principles we have been learning provide the combination that opens the words of our Bibles.

Remember our discussion on the simple and very common word "corn"? How many eyes have viewed those letters in their Bible without connecting them to "wheat?" Or what about Jesus' understanding of the word "baptism"? What did you think these words meant before you began this study?

Remember the words of the great lexicographer Samuel Johnson:

"But what makes a word obsolete more than general agreement to forbear it? And how shall it be continued when it conveys an offensive idea or recalled again into the mouths of mankind when it has once by disuse become unfamiliar, and by unfamiliar unpleasing?"

We are several thousand years removed from the times that the Sources lived. How many words and meanings have dropped out of use since then? During that same period there were many religious conflicts and conflicts over religious beliefs. How many beliefs and ideas were banned from use? Over time beliefs and ideas that were considered sacred by many faded from the realities of their descendants. Thanks to the tremendous gains in information management, analytical tools and the Internet -- we are the first generation that has the opportunity to do what those who came before us could not do -- reconstruct the ancient world more accurately than ever before. Many long forgotten bundles of associations are being resurrected. We are coming closer to viewing the ancient world through their eyes than ever before.

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END OF COURSE