There is a long history of careful preservation of the original, inspired text upon which our English Bibles are based. Amazingly, after 2,000 years of existence (1,440 years of which required hand-written copying), there are only two segments of the entire New Testament this long that are disputed: “The Longer Ending of Mark” (Mark 16:9-20) and “The Woman Caught in Adultery” (John 7:53-8:11). Before we lose our confidence that the Bible is God’s Word, people need to understand that ‘That is it’! Every other dispute is over spelling differences, a minor word or phrase, and they are easy to resolve. But the subject of the sermon will not be the science of text-criticism; instead, it will be Mark 16:9-20’s display of Jesus as The Conqueror of Unbelief. The reason is that central to a pastor’s calling in life is to “preach the word” (2 Tim. 4:2), that is, the Word of God as contained in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. And I believe Mark 16:9-20 is part of that Word.
